


maybe tomorrow (i'll find my way home)

by obsessivereader, SD_Ryan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky has a cat, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, POV Alternating, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Reincarnated Steve Rogers, Reincarnation, allusions to past rape/non-con, mild gore (treating injuries), suicide ideation, this is not a bucky recovery fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 20:54:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11836875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivereader/pseuds/obsessivereader, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SD_Ryan/pseuds/SD_Ryan
Summary: A man exits the building. Approximately 5’6”, thin, tired-looking. A suitable target. He needs someone he can overpower quickly and quietly. He’s injured from the fight on the helicarriers, and weak from hunger, and blood-loss.A streetlight illuminates the target’s face as he passes under it. That one brief glimpse of a narrow face and glowing blond hair sets his heart rate climbing. Something presses at the edges of his mind, like the wingbeats of night moths against a pane of glass. He ignores it, like he ignores the phantom voice that comes when he’s too long out of cryo. He walks towards the target, knife in hand.What if… What if Captain America died on the Valkyrie. What if he was reborn. What if the Winter Soldier met him after the fall of the helicarriers.





	maybe tomorrow (i'll find my way home)

**Author's Note:**

> To Summer, thank you so much for the beautiful art that perfectly captured everything I was going for with this fic. It's been wonderful working with you! To Val, my amazing beta who has listened to me whine about this fic for over a year. To the OG, you guys are the BEST. To the wonderful people in the SBB and RBB slack for motivation and company. To the SBB mods for putting all of this together.

****

 

**Chapter 1**

The helicarriers are falling. He’s failed his mission.

He doesn’t mind—even over the sound of explosions, he can hear the voice that comes when he’s too long out of the cryotube whispering, _I don_ _’t like bullies._ He’d let himself fail, and now, he lets himself fall, lets the weight of his arm pull him down down down into the water. He’s tired. He can finally rest.

But in the end, simple animal instinct forces him to the surface, his body’s will to live stronger than his desire for oblivion—and survival is a habit that persists.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

He stands under the trees bordering an open parking lot, and watches the featureless government building situated opposite. The sky darkens and the lot slowly empties. After an hour, only two cars are left, and the streets mostly deserted.

The itch of healing wounds, from where he’d dug out the trackers and poison capsules, makes him shift his shoulders under the bulky stolen jacket covering yet more stolen clothes. As far as he knows, only two implants are left, placed where he can’t reach; a tracker and a poison capsule behind the rib bones on either side of his T10 thoracic vertebra.

He estimates three days till the capsule releases its poison.

A man exits the building. Approximately 5’6”, thin, tired-looking. A suitable target. He needs someone he can overpower quickly and quietly. He’s injured from the fight on the helicarriers, and weak from hunger, and blood-loss.

A streetlight illuminates the target’s face as he passes under it. That one brief glimpse of a narrow face and glowing blond hair sets his heart rate climbing. Something presses at the edges of his mind, like the wingbeats of night moths against a pane of glass. He ignores it, like he ignores the phantom voice, and starts moving towards the target, knife in hand.

The target gets into his car, clutches the steering wheel and slumps forward to rest his head against his hands, exhaustion and despair evident in the droop of his shoulders. The sight increases the dissonance in his head.

He remembers—but can only grasp at fragments and more whispers.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

There’s a flicker of motion right outside the passenger window. Steve slams his hand down on the door lock button and fumbles for his keys. A fist comes smashing through the window. He flinches and instinctively covers his head with his arms. The passenger door opens and a large man slides into the seat, shutting the door behind him. There’s a knife in his hand and it’s pointing at Steve.

“Drive to your home.”

No. Fuck, no. Never go to a secondary location. _Get out of the car._

The man reaches out and grabs Steve’s hand before he can so much as twitch his hand towards his seat belt. Steve cries out in pain. It’s like being clamped in a vice.

“Please,” the man says.

Something about that low, oddly gentle voice catches at Steve, managing to penetrate the imperative to get free. It’s so _familiar._ He stops trying to free his hand and tries to get a look at the man—but it’s too dark, and the man’s cap throws most of his face into shadow. All Steve can make out is a stubbled jaw, and the gleam of light-colored eyes watching him.

The knife pointed at Steve lowers. “I know you...” the man says.

Steve’s met a lot of desperate people in his line of work, but he’s pretty sure he’d remember someone who sounded like he’d come from Brooklyn by way of Russia. And yet…

“Maybe,” Steve can’t help but agree. 

“Please,” the man says again. “Help me.”

Steve knows he has a problem saying no to people who need his help, but if he does this, he’s pretty sure Sam’s going to kill him. Assuming there’s anything left of him to kill—the man is dangerous, and possibly mentally unstable, and fucking punched a hole in his car window.

None of that changes the fact that Steve wants to help him.

No, it was so much more than that. Every part of him rebels at the thought of not doing everything he can to help the man. He can’t— _won_ _’t_ fail him. It’s a compulsion that defies all reason and logic.

“Okay,” Steve says. And something clicks into place inside him, some fault line in his soul finally realigned.

He starts his car and drives them home.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

The Soldier enters the apartment behind the target and scans the immediate area. There are two exit points apart from the front door; windows over the kitchen sink, and sliding doors that lead out to a balcony overlooking a courtyard two floors below. Since the curtains are drawn, he doesn’t stop the target from switching on the lights. 

His eyes are drawn to a poster hanging above the mantel—an image of a white star on a blue background, surrounded by concentric rings of red and white. It could be anything, but only one word comes to mind when he looks at it. 

Shield.

There are words printed under the image: _I've always believed that all you need is one man to make a difference. To stand up when others are told to sit down. To speak loudly for those who have no voice. And to fight the good fight_. 

He hears them spoken in his head, and he’s not sure if it’s the the target’s voice he hears, or the voice of the ghost that haunts him.

At the sound of approaching steps, he turns. 

The target stumbles to a halt and stares at him, blue eyes wide with shock. “Bucky?”

He feels the wingbeats again, doubled now by the sound of that name in the target’s voice. “Who is Bucky?”

“Sorry. It’s just...” A complex sequence of emotions crosses the target’s face before it assumes one that’s too bland to be natural. “Never mind. What’s your name?”

He carefully stores his strange reaction to that name, Bucky, for a time when he can examine it at length.

“I am the Soldier,” he says, in answer to the target’s question.

“That’s not a name.” The target looks confused. “Okay,” he tries again. “I’m Steve. That’s my name. What’s yours?”

“I have no name. I am the Soldier.”

“Soldier? Whose soldier?”

The target, Steve, has been cooperative so far. That’s unlikely to continue once he answers the question, but the thought of lying to Steve makes him… uncomfortable.

“Hydra’s,” he says.

Steve staggers backwards and scrambles for the door. There’s a bitter taste, like ashes, on the back of his tongue as he moves forward to grab Steve’s arm. “Please.”

Steve attempts to break his hold with a surprisingly well-executed move, one that’s tailored for his smaller size. It would’ve worked on someone of average strength and training. He is neither. Recalibrating his assessment of Steve’s ability to defend himself, he grabs both of Steve’s arms while turning his own body sideways to protect more vulnerable parts from narrow feet and bony knees.

“I won’t hurt you,” he says. “I only need your help to do one thing, and then I’ll leave.”

Steve glares up at him. “You’re that man. On the highway.” His voice is low and forceful, anger papering over fear. “You killed all those SHIELD employees!”

That and more _,_ he thinks. He cannot hold that incandescent gaze. He looks down. He feels… shame.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

The way the—the Soldier had withdrawn into himself, like he wanted to hide from Steve’s eyes… it’s all too painfully familiar. Steve’s seen it in the scared kids whose files cross his desk, in the vets at the VA Center where Sam works.

He stops trying to break free, and is released so fast that his arms remain suspended in the air for a moment before he drops them back to his sides. _Run, Steve,_ his common sense says, in a voice that sounds a lot like Sam’s, _what the fuck are you doing._

But again, he feels that compulsion. It locks him in place, and where fear should be, is a conviction that the man won’t hurt him. So instead of trying to run, he reaches out slowly. The man takes a wary step back and then remains still. He twitches when Steve’s hands get near his face, but allows Steve to pull his cap off.

No. It wasn't possible.

There’d been a moment earlier, when Steve had been seized by such a sudden and intense belief that the man who’d kidnapped him was Bucky Barnes, that the name had slipped out before he could stop himself. Maybe it was the angle of the man’s jaw, or the curve of his lips. Steve had put it down to a trick of light maybe, or a surface resemblance.

But this...

He knows that face. He has sketchbooks filled with that face, drawn from every angle, some based on photographs, others drawn from the dreams that have haunted him all his life.

And those eyes… they’re the eyes Steve sees in his dreams; sometimes blue and sometimes gray and sometimes every color in between, alight with mischief while playing in city streets, fierce with anger and worry while cleaning bleeding knuckles, full of terror while falling away into a snowy landscape. 

Only now, those eyes are hollowed and blank-looking.

No. The man is _not_ Bucky. He can’t be. Bucky is dead, and Steve needs to remember that his dreams are just dreams. They’re not the memories of the long-dead Captain America, no matter what Steve might’ve believed growing up.

The man in front of him is a dangerous killer working for Hydra. He is most definitely _not_ the Bucky Steve dreams about, the Bucky he’s more than a little in love with.

And yet… and yet… The man doesn’t have the eyes of a vicious killer. Instead, he has the harrowed eyes of someone who’s suffered for so long that it became all they knew, all they expected.

“Why’d you do it?” Steve asks, because he can’t just let it go. “Kill all those people?”

“My orders,” the man says tonelessly. “Failure will be punished.”

That sounded a hell of a lot like duress to Steve. “You really don’t know your name?”

The man’s jaw works, but his lips remained pressed together. He shakes his head once and doesn’t meet Steve’s eyes.

“They didn’t even let you keep your name,” Steve says with a sense of creeping horror. Hydra’s plans for the helicarriers had been horrifying. The death-toll would have been in the millions. His mind can’t even begin to encompass death on such a massive scale. But this... this one small, intimate detail, it _hurts._

“Do you want to pick one?” Steve asks carefully. “I’m not calling you… that.”

The man looks down, letting his hair cover his face. “What was the name you called me earlier.”

“Oh, um…” Steve clears his throat. “You mean ‘Bucky’?”

The man nods. “Why did you call me that.”

“You look like him.” Which is such an understatement that Steve’s proud of himself for not breaking into hysterical laughter. “James Buchanan Barnes. Most people call him Bucky Barnes. He was Captain America’s best friend.”

For a moment, the man is so still that Steve thinks he stopped breathing. Then, he looks up, a light in his eyes that hadn’t been there before, and now Steve’s the one who can’t breathe.

“Barnes,” the man says. “Call me Barnes.”

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

He lies face-down on a shower curtain spread over the floor of Steve’s living room, back bared, exposed and vulnerable. Barnes, he thinks. He has a name now, one he chose for himself. Barnes.

He tests the feel of it on his tongue, the shape of it on his lips, turns the sound of it over in his mind. It settles over his skin like an old, familiar shirt. The other name that Steve used, it felt even more familiar, but something inside him cringes away from calling himself that.

In the mirror Steve set up for him to watch the extraction, he can see that Steve is almost done disinfecting the collection of implements laid out on the towel next to him; a small paring knife, a pair of tweezers, needle-nosed pliers, and a long, narrow screwdriver.

When Barnes had sharpened the knife, Steve’s face had gone pale at the sound. Steve had paled even more when he’d asked for the tools from Steve’s toolbox. And when he’d taken off his shirt, exposing the metal arm and the scars where it met his body, the wounds scattered over his torso from where he’d removed the things lodged under his skin…

He tries not to think about the look on Steve’s face.

Instead, he thinks about the stubborn jut of Steve’s jaw when told that antiseptic was unnecessary, and the determined look in Steve’s eye as he’d ignored Barnes and continued wiping the makeshift surgical equipment with antiseptic wipes.

“Okay,” Steve says, just a hint of a quaver in his voice. “I’m going to clean your back too, okay?”

“Unnecessary.”

“Look,” Steve bites out. “If you want me to do this, then let me do it properly so you don’t die of septicemia. _Okay?_ ”

He studies the already familiar mutinous set of Steve’s jaw. He swallows a sigh and nods.

“Here I—”

He hears a shocked inhale of breath. In the mirror, Steve is staring at his back, eyes wide with shock. He tenses under the scrutiny. It must be the other scars, accumulated over the years from punishments, and injuries received while on missions. They’re almost invisible, faded by time and his healing factor, but Steve must be able to make them out under the bright light of the reading lamp trained on his back. He makes himself lie still under Steve’s scrutiny.

After a moment, Steve lets out a shaky breath. “Okay. I’m—I’m going to start.” His voice may not be steady, but his hands are gentle and sure as he works.

Barnes can’t remember the last time anyone had touched him with care. Against his will, he can feel his muscles relaxing as Steve continues wiping down his skin, taking extra care around still-healing wounds.

After going over every inch of his back, Steve sets the wipe aside, fidgets with the disposable gloves on his hands, and takes a few audible breaths. He picks up the paring knife. “I’m going to put my hand on you, and then I’m gonna cut.”

Steve had been doing that ever since they’d started; verbally prepare him before doing anything. It’s unnecessary as well, but he finds he appreciates the consideration. He keeps an eye on Steve in the mirror, watching for any signs of attack. Steve appears nervous but resolute, a small frown creasing his brow, full lips pursed, as he places a careful hand on Barnes’s back.

Barnes focuses on the feel of the latex against his skin, paying careful attention to the wrinkles on its surface, the coolness of Steve’s hand denoting poor circulation. He should be used to this by now, but his heart rate still escalates in anticipation of pain. Any moment now…

“Okay,” Steve says.

The knife descends. It feels like a razor-edged shard of ice sliding against his skin. There is a split-second of nauseating numbness as his flesh splits and the edges pull apart. Then, sensation rushes back, white-hot pain coupled with a bone-deep ache. He grits his teeth and breathes through the pain.

Steve irrigates the wound with saline solution, flushing away the blood.

“Do you see it,” he asks Steve.

“Um… I can’t—” Steve pours more saline on the cut and dabs at his skin with some gauze. “I think I’m gonna have to—to—I’m gonna use my fingers, okay?”

“Yes.”

Steve squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, face pale, an unhappy twist to his mouth. When he opens his eyes again, they’re clear and focused. He swallows, and then inserts his fingers into the cut and probes for the tracker. Pain levels escalate.

“Found it.”

He lets out a silent breath. “Remove it carefully. Don’t press hard.”

Steve’s hand hesitates over the screwdriver before he picks it up. He uses it to pry the tracker out from where it’s lodged behind the rib bone, and then the pliers to pull it out. He holds it up for Barnes to see.

“Good. Now the other one.”

“I’m going to cut now.” Strain is evident in Steve’s voice, but his hands remain steady even though he’s gripping the knife handle so hard that his knuckles show up white through the gloves.

Another cut, this time on the left side of his spine. The pain from the first extraction site is spreading and merging with this new cut, making it difficult for him to tell what Steve is doing.

“Done.”

“Give them to me.”

Steve hands him the blood-covered devices. He wraps them up in a strip of bandage and grips the bundle in his hand.

“I’m gonna clean and dress the wounds now.”

“Un—”

_“I’m going to clean and dress the wounds now.”_

Barnes doesn’t need to look in the mirror to picture the expression on Steve’s face.

“What were those things?” Steve asks.

“Tracker. Poison capsule.”

“Poison capsule?” Steve pauses in the process of wiping the blood off his skin. “How does that work?”

“Timed release. Dissolves after five days.”

“Was that the last of them?” Steve demands, voice tight.

“I think so,” Barnes answers in a neutral tone, and watches Steve carefully in the mirror.

Steve freezes. “You _think_ so?”

“I was not always conscious during the procedures.”

“Fucking—” Steve takes a few deep breaths and Barnes can see him trying to calm himself down. Is Steve angry at him, or for him?

Steve leans forward and finishes applying butterfly bandages to the cuts. “How much longer do you have?”

“One, maybe two days.”

“I have a friend,” Steve says. “He might be able to get his hands on a hand-held metal detector. Could we use that to check?”

He can’t remember the last time anyone offered him help. He can’t remember the last time he was part of a ‘we’. He was taken out when needed, used, maintained, returned to storage. Sometimes, if he was lucky, the voice would come to him before the cold took him. Sometimes, there would also be fleeting impressions of laughter, affection, warmth, but sometimes there was also fear, and worry, and the sound of flesh striking flesh, gunfire.

He was a whole person, once. He wonders if there’s enough left of him to be one again.

“Barnes?”

Barnes tries to focus. Too long without sustenance and rest, his back a constant throb of pain. Thought processes dropping to sub-optimal levels. “No. Risk of discovery is too high.”

“You can trust him. I swear. He’s a good guy. He helps people, soldiers, he’ll understand. About your situation, I mean.”

“My situation,” Barnes repeats, his voice sounding slurred and distant in his own ears. The image of the room in the mirror swims in his vision, seeming to shrink, becoming dark and cramped, barely big enough to house two people.

“Hey,” he hears, as a hand is laid on his shoulder. “Are you with me?”

He’s missed this; Steve taking care of him, helping him to bed after he’d come home drunk after a date… He just… he just needs to rest… it’ll be better in the morning. Steve’ll have a cup of coffee waiting for him when he wakes up. Probably a scolding, too, for having to drag his drunk, heavy ass to bed. Steve’ll be a contradiction of biting words and gentle hands.

He releases a sigh. He’s safe here… he can rest now. His eyes close and he lets himself slip away.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

Steve waits, but no answer comes. “Barnes?”

When he checks in the mirror, he sees that Barnes has fallen asleep. His face looks worn and haggard, but still somehow… at peace. One lock of hair has slid down to lie across his cheek, and Steve’s hand is already reaching out to smooth it back when he catches himself and pulls it back to his side. He has no right to touch.

Seeing Barnes like this, tired and battered, Steve has a sudden flash of memory—no, _dream._ In it, Bucky is asleep in a tent, looking thin and worn. There’s a bruise on his cheek, and dark circles under his eyes. Bucky frowns, as though he can’t escape what haunts him, even in sleep.

Steve resists the urge to bang his head with his fist. Barnes is _not_ Bucky. 

He finishes wiping the blood from Barnes’s back and sides, exposing the old scars that criss-cross his skin. The chilling beauty of the metal arm makes the scars on his shoulder look redder and more lurid. What had Barnes been put through that he could hold perfectly still while Steve sliced him open? He hadn’t even made a sound.

That question, and the matter-of-fact way Barnes had described the things Hydra had put inside him, will probably haunt Steve’s nightmares for a long time to come. Hydra had taken a good man and tried to reduce him to nothing more than a weapon. They’d failed. Not once during the night had Barnes shown Steve either malice, or cruelty.

He takes a few deep breaths and has to wait for his hands to stop shaking before he applies the bandages.

When he’s done, he bundles up the blood-soaked towels, bandages, and swabs, and dumps them into a trash bag. He glares at the sleeping form on his living room floor, his mind picking at the fact that there might be more poison capsules in Barnes’s body, just waiting to dissolve.

Fuck Hydra. No way in hell he’s going to stand by and let that happen. He has to set right what was done to Barnes. _Has_ to.

He calls Sam.

“Sam,” he says without preamble when Sam picks up. “Can you get me a hand-held metal detector? Like, right now?”

“Man, what the hell are you up to?”

“There’s... a guy. He needs help.”

There’s a long pause ripe with suspicion. “Did you pick up another stray? I swear to God you are gonna get your throat cut one of these days.”

“This is serious, Sam.” Steve puts every ounce of conviction he can into his words. “This guy needs help, and I need that metal detector.”

Another long pause, and then, “Okay,” Sam sighs. “Gimme an hour.”

Steve lets out a pent-up breath. “Thank you,” he says, “so much. I really appreciate this. Oh, and call me when you get here and I’ll come down to you.”

“What the _hell_...? Who is this guy?!”

Steve glances over at Barnes’s sleeping form, the need to hide him, even from Sam, a pulse beating under his skin. “It’s a long story, but I promise I’ll tell you everything.”

Sam sighs, frustration evident in the sound. “You better be careful, you hear? _”_

“I will. I trust this guy.”

There’s another long pause. Steve wonders what his voice gave away. “You owe me big time, Steve, and I expect all the details.”

“As soon as I can.”

Sam says “Huh,” and hangs up.

Steve’s hands are shaking when he puts the phone down on the coffee table and slumps back in the couch. He closes his eyes and ignores the sting of contacts left in too long. His stomach chooses that moment to remind him that he hasn’t eaten since six o’clock, when he’d inhaled a soggy ham sandwich from the deli across the street. He’d been too busy sorting out the details of his newest case to grab anything else to eat. How some parents could do that to their kid, he will never understand.

He looks at Barnes and wants to bury his head in his hands. Instead, he gets up, pulls the lap blanket off the back of the couch, walks over to Barnes, and covers him with it from the waist down. It’s been a day for being confronted by the terrible things people could do to their fellow human beings.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

It’s still dark when Barnes jerks awake from his dream. Falling, always falling, his screams ringing loudly in his ears. But this time, he’d caught the sound of someone calling for him as he fell through the air.

His back throbs with the dull ache of healing wounds when he turns his head away from the mirror to scan the room. He spots Steve sleeping on the couch, curled up on his side facing Barnes, with his hands tucked between his knees. Cold hands, Barnes thinks.

A strange image overlays Steve—someone smaller, thinner, frailer, lying in a nest of blankets on a threadbare couch. The voice in his head whispers, _“Bucky?”_

Coffee, he thinks dazedly, there should be coffee.

He shakes his head to clear away the strange thought. There is never coffee waiting for him when he wakes. Only hard men with hard hands.

He gets noiselessly to his feet, pausing when he notices the fuzzy red blanket draped over his legs. Thinking of the way Steve had curled up on the couch, he wishes Steve had kept it for himself, but he can’t help feeling touched by the gesture nonetheless.

Then, he spots the metal detector on the coffee table.

Steve had gotten it for him, while he was unconscious and defenseless, instead of calling the police. He looks at the blanket in his hands, then he walks over to drape it over Steve. He tenses when Steve sighs and uncurls under the warmth of the blanket, but thankfully, his eyes remain closed.

It’s time to go, he thinks, with a strange reluctance. Every extra moment increases the chances of Hydra tracking him to Steve’s apartment. He grabs the metal detector and some bandages, and heads to the bathroom.

A scan identifies one implant behind his left knee and another above his right hip. He gets into the shower and cuts them out using the knife that’s strapped to his inner arm. After rinsing off every trace of blood, he adds the cleaned-off tracker and poison capsule to his collection before stuffing the bundle of bloody devices into the pocket of his discarded jeans. The trackers will get tossed in a river around the time the last capsule dissolves. Hopefully, Hydra will believe he died.

Bandaged and dressed, he heads back to the living room. A sudden wave of dizziness as he’s rolling up the shower curtain reminds him that he needs sustenance, so he checks the fridge and takes out a jar of peanut butter. With a silent apology to Steve, he spreads some on a slice of bread and stuffs it into his mouth.

He pockets the jar, then writes Steve a short note to report the requisitioning of the bread and peanut butter, thank Steve for the metal detector, and remind him to wipe down every surface with bleach. He leaves the note on the coffee table, weighted down with the TV remote.

He crouches next to where Steve is sleeping and watches him for a while, comforted by the smooth, even, rise and fall of Steve’s chest as he breathes. He’s not sure how long he’d have stayed there if the thought of Hydra finding Steve wasn’t like a knife to his throat.

When he goes, he doesn’t look back—just closes the door behind him. He ignores the tearing sensation in his chest as he walks away.

 

**Chapter 2**

 

Steve wakes up coughing, his throat dry and scratchy thanks to his goddamned allergies. He fumbles on the bedside table for his glasses, puts them on, and checks his phone. It’s just past four in the morning. Great. He’ll probably be wide awake once he gets out of bed to refill the glass he has on his nightstand.

He opens the bedroom door, empty glass in hand, and shuffles out on socked feet. He’s two steps out the door before he spots the guy in a hoodie standing next to the dining table.

 _Fuck_.

The guy’s holding his laptop. His laptop with all the electronic copies of his kids’ case files. _Confidential_ case files. They’re encrypted, and backed up, but still—

“Hey!”

The guy flinches as he snaps his head up to stare at Steve. Then, he drops the laptop and whips out a gun. Steve freezes, eyes riveted to the dark hole of the barrel pointed at him.

He raises his hands slowly. “Please,” he says, keeping his voice low and steady even though his heart is racing in his chest. “You can have the laptop, but please, just let me delete some stuff off it. I work for Child Protective Services and I’ve got private information in there.”

The light from the lampposts outside reflect off the guy’s wide, glaring eyes. He shakes his head furiously and jabs the gun in Steve’s direction. “Shut up!” he shouts, with a shrill, manic edge to his voice. The guy shifts his weight from foot to foot as he gets more agitated. He acts like he’s hopped up on something, and that gives Steve a very bad feeling about his chances of not getting shot.

Steve hunches down, trying to make himself look even smaller and less threatening. If he de-escalates the situation, he might be able to get close enough to the guy to disarm him.

Then, with no warning whatsoever, a dark shape looms behind the guy. An arm rises and falls, there’s a sickening thud, and the guy pitches forward, landing on the floor hard enough that Steve can feel the impact through the soles of his feet. There’s a clatter as the new guy kicks the first guy’s gun out of reach.

Steve turns and sprints for his bedroom. _Whatthefuckwhatthefuck._ Two guys in his apartment?! He only manages a few steps before a hand wraps around his arm and spins him around so he’s face to face with—

“ _Ba—?!_ _”_ A hand is clamped over his mouth, stifling the rest of his yell.

Barnes puts a finger to his lips and shakes his head. When Steve nods his understanding, Barnes removes his hand.

“How—” Steve says, as he tries to process the fact that _Barnes_ is in his apartment. “Where did you come from? What are you doing here? I looked for you! I thought you were dead, or captured, or—”

No, deal with that later.

He pulls free from Barnes’s hold and goes over to where the guy is lying face down next to the dining table, with Barnes close behind him. He kneels and checks for a pulse. Yes… there. Strong and steady. He releases a pent-up breath and sits back on his heels. Not dead, just unconscious.

He gets to his feet and squints up at Barnes, who’s standing next to him. In the low light, about all he can make out is that Barnes had cut his hair at some point in the seven months since he’d left Steve’s apartment. Reaching behind him, he flips the switch to the kitchen light.

Steve’s breath leaves him in a shocked gasp as he staggers back and bumps into the breakfast counter. With his hair cut short, and just a slight scruff on his face, Barnes looks even more like Bucky then he did before.  There’s just no way…

Barnes takes a step towards him then stops. “Are you alright?”

“You—you _really_ look like Bucky Barnes.” He can’t stop staring, taking in the sloping brow, the hooded gray eyes, that weirdly wide bridge of his nose, the angle of his jaw… those lips. “I’m not the only one who sees it... right?”

There’s a flicker of emotion in Barnes’s eyes as he leans forward to switch off the light. Even though Steve normally doesn’t like people getting too close to him, he doesn’t move when Barnes’s arm almost brushes his shoulder.

“One or two people have mentioned it,” Barnes says. He looks down at the guy lying at their feet. “But we have other things to worry about.”

Steve blinks in the sudden darkness. Oh. That’s right. There’s an unconscious man on his floor, something that had kind of slipped his mind after seeing Barnes’s face.

“Do you know who he is?” Steve asks.

Barnes shakes his head. “Probably just a thief.” He nods at the half-open sliding door that led out to a small balcony, the curtains bracketing it billowing gently in the night breeze. “Came in through there.”

Steve blinks. “How did _you_ get in?”

“Same way.”

God-fucking-dammit. First thing tomorrow, he’s going to the hardware store to get some metal rods to fit in the tracks. A thought occurs to him. “How did you know—”

Barnes raises a hand. “Later. First, you need to call a friend, ask them to come over, pretend they were sleeping on your couch.”

“What?” Steve feels caught out by the strange request. “Why?”

“I hit him from behind. He’ll know there was someone else in the apartment.”

“Could we… I don’t know, dump him somewhere before he wakes up?”

“He might get curious. Curious people can do odd things.”

He can see the sense in that, but the thought of lying to the police—of asking _Sam_ to lie to the police… guilt settles, cold and tight, in his gut. He’ll do it, though, because he has to protect Barnes. It’s a need he can’t seem to shake.

“Say I can get someone to come over,” he says, turning to face Barnes. “He’ll still take at least half an hour to get here. What if the guy wakes up before then?”

“He won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m very well trained,” Barnes says, with an odd note in his voice that raises the hair on Steve’s neck.

Steve’s eyes flick towards the unconscious guy on the floor between them. “There’s someone I can call,” he says.

Barnes holds out his phone. “Use mine.”

Steve’s stomach turns over at the reminder that they need to cover their tracks. _Sorry, Sam._ He takes the phone and dials. After five rings, he hears a familiar, grumpy voice.

“Who the hell is this, and do you know what time it is?”

“Sam, it’s Steve. I—I really need your help.”

“Are you okay?” Sam says urgently. There's a rustle of cloth as covers are thrown back. “Who’s phone is this?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I am. Don’t worry. I’ll explain later. Can you,” Steve pauses to swallow past the lump in his throat. “Can you come over?”

“Sure, man. Whatever you need.”

Steve grips the phone a little tighter and takes a deep breath. “Even if I need you to tell the cops that you were sleeping on my couch tonight and knocked out some guy who broke into my apartment?”

“Whoa.”

“It’s okay, Sam. You don’t have to—”

“Okay, hold up. I didn’t say I won’t do it. But you need to tell me what the hell is going on.”

“I came out to get some water, and then I saw this guy, and he pulled a gun on me—”

“Fuck!”

Steve winces as the clatter of something hitting the floor comes through the phone, sharp and jarring.

“I’m okay! I’m okay,” he rushes to assure Sam. “Barnes… um. Barnes knocked him out.”

There’s a long silence.

“Barnes,” Sam says, with the exact same disapproving tone he’d used when Steve had finally told him that the metal detector had been for the Winter Soldier. Sam had yelled at him for a good ten minutes, and is still convinced that Barnes’s resemblance to Bucky had messed with Steve’s instincts.

He can’t really blame Sam for thinking that, because by the time he’d spoken to Sam, he’d half believed it himself. But not anymore. Seeing Barnes again, feeling that exact same compulsion to protect him, to do right by him, Steve knows it’s more than just about surface similarities.

“Yes,” he replies, steady and sure.

“ _Barnes_ is in your apartment.”

“Yes.”

“Right now.”

“Yes.”

Sam says softly, and with feeling, “Fuck.”

“So—So I need you to come over and pretend you were the one who knocked the guy out.”

 There is a long, resigned sigh.

“It’s a lot,” Steve says. “I understand if you can’t do this.”

“Shut up. My pants are already on.”

“Thank you,” Steve says softly. He breathes a little easier, and will always be grateful that one of his kids had brought him into Sam’s orbit.

“Anytime,” Sam says, and hangs up.

So… that was done. Now all he has to do is wait. His gaze drops to the guy lying facedown on the floor. In the sudden lull, he becomes conscious of how fast his heart is beating.

There’d been a—a gun pointed at his face—

His hands start to shake, and his knees suddenly feel like they can’t support his weight as he pictures the black emptiness of the muzzle. His instructor had warned him that a fake gun pointed at him during self-defense classes couldn’t prepare him for the real thing. He’d been right.

A band tightens around his chest, and his breath starts to saw in and out of his lungs.

Fuck. He needs his inhaler. He turns around and crashes right into Barnes. Hands grip his arms to steady him.

“Steve.”

Steve blinks and looks up at Barnes. When had he gotten so close?

“What do you need?” Barnes asks.

“Inhaler,” Steve croaks out. “The blue one. On my nightstand.”

Barnes nods. “You go sit down. I’ll get it.” 

“What?” he gasps.

“Sit down,” Barnes says again. He takes Steve by the arm, and leads him to the couch.

Steve doesn’t even question it, just follows where Barnes leads him. He sits down and is just starting to wonder why he’d trusted Barnes to get the inhaler for him when it’s shoved under his nose.

He grabs it and takes a puff. While he waits for the tightness in his chest to ease, Barnes shakes out the blanket thrown over the back of the couch, and spreads it over Steve’s lap, tucking the edges behind his back to secure it.

Barnes gets down on one knee next to Steve so he’s at eye level. “Your friend will be here soon,” he says, voice low and soothing, eyes steady and calm. “Then you can call the police. I’ll stay with you until he arrives.”

Steve nods, unable to take his eyes of Barnes. He finds himself timing his breaths to the measured rhythm of Barnes’s breathing. He can feel his heart slowing, anxiety ebbing, and a strange absence on his left shoulder, where the weight of a hand should be.

He’s not sure how he got to this point; with an unconscious thief lying on his apartment floor, a gun kicked into a corner somewhere, and the Winter Soldier tucking him in; but after months of worrying about Barnes—was he safe? free?—he’s not complaining.

Steve hasn’t stopped thinking about Barnes since the morning he’d woken up to find Barnes gone. When he’d realized he would probably never see Barnes again, he’d been nearly frantic. It hadn’t made any sense at all.

He’d checked newspapers and followed forum discussions on Hydra’s files. And then, the decrypted files on Hydra’s Soldier had hit the internet. The memory of scanned pages full of clinical notations on how much pain Barnes could tolerate before losing consciousness still makes him feel sick.

When reports had started coming in about the crackdowns on Hydra’s activities, all thanks to information provided by an anonymous source, he’d felt a vicious satisfaction. He was pretty sure he knew who that source was.

And now, Barnes is here in his apartment, and he looks… good. Sure his cheeks were still a little hollow, but he’d lost that frayed, worn quality about him.

“You probably saved my life,” Steve says. “Thank you.”

Barnes shakes his head. “I owe you a debt.

“No, you d—”

“Steve,” Barnes says, and gives him a look. He’s not sure why, but it shuts him up for long enough that Barnes starts talking again.

“We should go over the details before your friend arrives. You came out for…”

“You don’t owe me.” Steve crosses his arms over his chest and frowns at Barnes.

Barnes looks pointedly at the unconscious guy and then back at Steve. “You came out for…?”

Alright, fine. Steve concedes that now is probably not the best time to get into that argument. “A glass of water,” he mutters.

“…a glass of water and interrupted the thief. Your friend hit him over the head with that”—he points at the wooden statuette of an owl that had been a gift from a grateful parent, lying discarded next to the thief—“then kicked the gun aside. Ask him to pick up that owl thing with his right hand, you need his prints on it, just in case.”

“Okay,” Steve says.

“Do you know how to fire a weapon?”

“No, but Sam does.”

“Good. Ask him to stay near the gun till the police arrive. It’s just a precaution. The man should remain unconscious for another thirty minutes. It’s unlikely he’ll wake up before then, but I’ll stay in the kitchen till your friend arrives, just in case. We shouldn’t talk in the meantime.”

Steve nods, feeling dazed by the influx of instructions. 

Barnes stands up.

“Wait,” Steve says, hand reaching out of its own accord before Steve yanks it back. Every instinct in his body is screaming at him: _don_ _’t lose him again._ And he still can’t understand _why._ What is it about Barnes that affects him so strongly?

“Can I see you again.”

Barnes hesitates before answering finally, “I’ll contact you.” Then he walks off towards the kitchen and Steve loses sight of him in the darkness.

Steve sits on the couch and fidgets, attention slewed towards the unconscious man on the floor behind him, and the man standing sentinel in the kitchen.

It’s a relief when ten minutes later, he hears a light tapping on the door. Sam. He gets up to let him in. From the corner of his eyes, he sees Barnes quietly slip out the sliding doors. He has to clamp his lips together to stop himself from calling Barnes back.

And then it’s a flurry of activity as they set up the couch and call the police. All the while, he can’t help thinking about Barnes, standing out in the cold.

The thief is still unconscious when Officers Peña and Cline arrive, so they revive him and cuff him. He’s incoherent and aggressive and obviously high. Even better, he’s not altogether clear on how he ended up knocked out.

Sam lies like a champion, and impresses the officers with his credentials. When it’s Steve’s turn, he fumbles his way through his prepared story. He’s not above playing up his small size for sympathy, and hopes his awkwardness can be chalked up to shock. After inspecting the jimmied lock on the sliding doors, the officers lead the thief away in cuffs, bringing the gun and the statuette with them.

In the quiet that follows, Steve contemplates locking himself in his bedroom to avoid the coming conversation, but instead, he curls up on the couch and pulls the blanket over himself to ward off the late autumn chill.

Sam takes a seat in the armchair that gives him the best view of Steve’s face. The silence stretches out as Steve squirms under Sam’s scrutiny.

“You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Steve clears his throat. “Pretty much what I told the cops, Sam.”

Sam raises one unimpressed eyebrow. “Except for the part where the dude with the metal _arm_ _’s_ the one who actually took out the thief?”

“Yeah. Just that part.”

“What was he doing here? Is he stalking you?”

“I—You know? I really don’t know… I tried to ask, but then we got distracted.” Barnes had been the one to introduce that distraction, actually, but it’s probably not a good idea to tell Sam that. Steve doesn’t know how to explain his conviction that Barnes won’t hurt him, not when he can’t even explain it to himself. “And then it slipped my mind,” he continues. “Got a little shaky at the end.”

Sam eyes the inhaler on the coffee table. He nods, eyes softening with sympathy.

“He got me my inhaler, and then he covered me with a blanket, and told me I was safe.”

“That’s… okay, yeah, that’s the right thing to do,” Sam concedes. “But what the hell? The guy’s dangerous, man. Do you know how hard it is to knock someone out for that long _without_ doing serious damage?”

“Maybe he’s just… well-trained?”

“What the fuck?” Sam gives him an incredulous look.

“Look, I know this sounds stupid, but he’s a good man. And I’ve been following the message boards about him. Have you seen them? Some people are saying he’s a POW. He was tortured, Sam. He about said as much to me the night we met. And they experimented on him like he was some kind of—of animal.” Steve takes a few deep breaths, and checks that the inhaler is within reach. “They tagged him like a fucking animal, Sam. They put a—a _kill switch_ in him _._ ”

“You never told me any of this, Steve.”

Steve hunches down in his seat. “I told you about the tracker and the poison capsule,” he says.

Sam raises an eyebrow.

Yeah, okay. He hadn’t told Sam he’d been chasing down every bit of information he could find on Barnes. It was somehow too personal, too private a thing to share with anyone. Not even Sam. He sets his jaw and doesn’t say anything.

“After this,” Sam says, “you and I are gonna have a long talk about this—this _thing_ you have about the Winter Soldier.” Sam runs a tired hand over his face. “I get that he was forced, but if this guy was tortured by Hydra, and forced to kill, then he needs help _. Professional_ help.” Sam leans forward in his chair and pins Steve with a look. “We should contact someone.”

Steve’s already shaking his head before Sam finishes speaking. “I’m not turning him in, not after everything he’s been through. What do you think the government’s going to do if they get their hands on him? They’re going to see a loaded gun, and they’re going to want to pick it up and use it. And it’s not like he’s hurting innocent people—”

“That we know of,” Sam interjects.

“You know how someone’s been calling in those anonymous tips?”

Sam groans and rolls his eyes. “Aw hell no, Rogers.”

“And how,” Steve continues, ignoring Sam’s interjection, “someone’s been leaving unconscious Hydra agents for the feds? I think it’s him.”

“Steve,” Sam says, his voice so careful that Steve braces himself for what’s coming. “You know he’s not actually Bucky Barnes, right? He’s not some war hero.”

All the breath in Steve’s lungs leaves him on a sigh as he slumps back in the couch. “Yeah, Sam. I know. I’m not crazy.” He must be though, just a little. “I just… I want to help him. He’s a good person. He deserves a chance at a life.”

He looks Sam squarely in the eye. “I swear to you, if I think he’s becoming dangerous, I will turn him in myself.”

“Okay,” Sam says, reluctance obvious in his voice. “It’s your call.” 

Fifteen minutes later, while he’s lying in bed, he gets a text from an unknown number. The message comprises just one character: B.

The tension that had gripped him ever since he’d watched Barnes walk away finally looses its grip on him. He sends back a smiley face, takes a moment to process the fact that he just sent the Winter Soldier a smiley, and saves the number to his contacts.

Now, it was time to see if he could get some straight answers from Barnes.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

Barnes sits on the deckchair on his balcony, even after the lights have gone out, one by one, in Steve’s apartment. He should probably go inside now that he’s sure Steve’s okay, but Noski is a warm ball of fur curled up on his lap, purring contentedly, and he’s loath to disturb her.

The phone in his hand buzzes, making him twitch. He looks at the screen, and isn’t surprised at the name he sees. Giving Steve his number was a security risk he couldn’t afford to take, and yet, for all his hard-taught control, he hadn’t been able to stop himself.

He scratches Noski one last time under her chin before lifting her off his lap. He goes inside, stepping carefully to avoid tripping over her while she winds her way around his ankles like a wisp of black shadow.

Only after he closes and locks the sliding door behind him, does he tap the screen and hold the phone up to his ear. “Hello.”

“Barnes?”

Steve’s voice is surprisingly deep, like it belonged to a much larger man. A memory flickers at the back of his mind, but he ignores it. He can’t afford to get confused by the odd similarities between Steve and someone who’d died a very long time ago.

“Yes.” He sits down on the threadbare couch that had come with the apartment and lets Noski leap onto his lap. He strokes her slowly, hoping the motion will calm his disquiet. 

“Did I wake you?”

“No.” He hears a softly muttered “Oh boy,” probably because Steve doesn’t know how acute his hearing is. He casts about for something to say. “I don’t sleep much,” he offers.

“Oh,” Steve says in a careful voice. “Why is that?”

Because he dreams of blood and death and falling and ice. “I don’t know.”

At least it’s better now, since Noski decided she preferred his bed to the cat bed he’d bought for her. Her aggrieved yowls when he twitches in his sleep are enough to wake him from the dreams most nights.

“Oh,” Steve says again. “Well… I called to let you know that everything went off without a hitch, and the police took the guy away. So thank you. Again.” There’s a pause, then Steve continues, an edge to his voice that wasn’t there before. “Now… you want to explain just how you knew that guy was in my apartment?”

Barnes swallows a sigh even though he’d known the conversation was inevitable. “I have motion sensors and cameras at all points of ingress into your apartment,” he replies.

“You bugged my apartment?!”

“No,” he says firmly. “No bugs. Visuals only on the exterior of doors and windows. I can’t see into your apartment.”

“You do know I have no way of knowing whether you’re telling the truth, right.”

“Yes, I do know that.”

There’s a suspicious silence. Then, “Are you trying to be funny?”

“No,” he says. “I don’t do that.”

There’s a snort from the other end of the line.

“If you want,” Barnes offers, “I can tell you how to find them.”

“How about you show me, instead,” Steve says, sharp, so Barnes knows he’s still not off the hook.

“And how would I do that.”

“By coming over for dinner tomorrow.” It sounds not so much a request as an order. “How do you feel about pizza?”

It’s salty, not particularly nutritious, and leaves him feeling sluggish. He has an unwholesome fondness for it anyway. He accepts the invitation to an interrogation, much to his own surprise.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

It’s seven in the evening and he’s standing outside Steve’s apartment with a six-pack of the most expensive beer he could find. The article he’d found online advised that a good guest should not show up empty-handed. He doesn’t normally show up at someone’s door empty-handed, but a gift is a welcome change from the things he usually brings.

Steve opens the door and blinks at him for a second. “Barnes,” he says, in a voice gone oddly breathy.

When he sees Steve, it’s a shock all over again because all he can see is his Steve, the Steve he’d grown up with. He has to focus on all the differences so he doesn’t get mixed up in his head; the way this Steve is taller, body lean and straight where his Steve was skinny and crooked, the face sort of in between Steve’s before and after the serum.

But his eyes—so blue that even the horn-rimmed glasses can’t mute their impact—it shouldn’t be possible, but they’re the exact same blue that he’s never forgotten.

“Oh,” Steve says with a pleased smile, “thank you.”

He blinks and stares blankly at Steve for a moment before he remembers the beer in his hands. He holds the pack out. Steve takes it from him and steps back to let him in.

“Grab a seat,” Steve calls over his shoulder, as he goes to put away the beer. “Food’s on the coffee table. I thought we could catch a game while we eat.”

Barnes stares after him. There seems to be a truce in effect. He expects the questions will start up after they finish eating, since Steve doesn’t seem the sort to let something like unauthorized surveillance go.

There’s a box of pizza, and two plates in front of the TV. He takes a seat on one end of the couch and waits for Steve, grateful that the TV means he doesn’t have to talk much while they eat. He’d lost the knack for making conversation a long time ago.

They eat their pizza and drink their beer while watching grown men chase after a ball, with Steve making the odd comment now and then about the game. Barnes can’t help remembering other games watched in other times.

“Why didn’t you wake me before you left?” Steve asks, as he hands Barnes the last slice of pizza. “That first time, I mean. I would’ve made you a better breakfast than a jar of peanut butter.”

“There was a slice of bread as well.”

“Wow.”

“It was enough,” he says. “Hydra might have been tracking me. I wanted to be gone as soon as possible.”

“Hydra?” Steve straightens up in his seat, a worried look on his face. “Do you think they’ll come here?”

“It was a concern. That’s why I’ve been keeping an eye on your apartment. But now, I think they have other problems.”

Hydra was scrambling to hide from the Avengers, Stark’s too-smart AI, and the FBI. Hopefully, that meant they were too busy to worry about one lost, possibly-dead asset. 

“‘Other problems’.” Steve repeats, with a knowing look before his voice turns brusque. “About that ‘keeping an eye’ thing...”

It seemed the truce was over. “Come on.” Barnes puts his empty plate on the coffee table and stands up.

As they walk over to the door, his steps falter when he catches sight of the poster. He knows what it is now. He’d researched Bucky Barnes after he’d left Steve’s apartment that first time, and spent far too long staring at the image of a young Steven Grant Rogers.

It had been the catalyst that sparked a chain reaction in his mind. That night, his sleep had been riddled with confusing dreams. In them, he’d seen Steve, sometimes big, sometimes small, and sometimes, he turned into the Steve who’d cut his back open. A week later, he’d made his way to Arlington Cemetery, where Steve’s remains had been interred after the Valkyrie had been found.

You idiot, he’d thought, as he stared at the tomb and ignored the tears dripping off his chin, you could’ve made it.

“That’s Captain America’s shield,” Steve says, pulling Barnes out of his thoughts. Without his noticing it, Steve had gotten close enough that his shoulder was almost brushing Barnes’s sleeve.

“You probably knew that already,” Steve says, slanting him an embarrassed look, “since you’ve heard of Bucky Barnes. My parents named me after him,” Steve continued. “Well, I mean, I’m Steven _Brendan_ Rogers, instead of Grant, but, you know… close enough. He’s—well, this sounds ridiculous, but he’s my idol.” He points at the poster. “That’s my favorite quote of his, and it’s why I do what I do.”

Barnes wonders if Steve realized how his shoulders tightened up defensively as he talked about the Captain. Had he been teased for idolizing Captain America?

He has a sudden, painful image of Steve getting up, again and again, after being knocked down and laughed at for trying to do the right thing. He's not sure which Steve he’s seeing.

“What do you do,” he asks Steve.

“I wanted to be a soldier, like him. But”—he waves his hand down his body and says in a self-deprecating tone—“I’m not exactly prime soldier material. Then as I grew older, I realized we don’t really fight to protect people anymore, we fight to protect access to resources. So I got into social work.” He shrugs. “There are so many people… _kids_ who need protection right here.”

Barnes reads the words on the poster. “‘To speak loudly for those who have no voice.’”

Steve nods.

“You don’t like bullies.”

There’s a curious light in Steve’s eyes when he looks at Barnes. “I don’t like bullies,” Steve agrees.

A shiver runs down his spine at the sound of Steve’s voice repeating the words of his ghost. To stop himself from doing something very foolish, he pulls out his phone. He unlocks it, launches an app, and holds it out to Steve.

Steve takes it with a confused look. “What—?”

“You wanted to know how I knew someone got in.” He nods at the phone. “This is how.”

A frown creases Steve’s brow when he recognizes the balcony on the feed being streamed to Barnes’s phone. He taps through the other feeds on the app; the front door, the kitchen window, the bedroom window.

While Steve explores the app, Barnes explains how the surveillance equipment is set up, including the motion sensors that are programmed to sound an alarm on his phone, because even he needs to sleep. Fortunately, Steve doesn’t ask the obvious question, because he’d rather not have to explain where and how he’d obtained the equipment.

After Steve returns the phone, he crosses his arms and studies Barnes.

“Okay,” Steve says, after a long moment in which Barnes has to force himself not to fidget under Steve’s scrutiny. “I get why you did it, and I’m not crazy enough to think I can take on Hydra if they come looking for me.” His gaze turns steely. “But don’t you _ever_ make decisions about my safety without talking to me first.”

Barnes nods without hesitation—that concession is more than he’d hoped for. The thought of not being able to keep Steve safe makes his skin crawl.

“Okay,” Steve says. “Good.” Some of the tension bleeds from his body and he uncrosses his arms to gesture at the phone in Barnes’s hand. “So what name did you use for your phone plan?”

Barnes blinks at the sudden change of topic. “John Barnes,” he says.

“I like it.”

Steve slants him a look, lips tilted in a crooked smile that makes his heart lurch in his chest. He licks his lips, feeling… nervous isn’t the right word, but it’s the closest he can come up with for the moment.

Steve ducks his head, his cheeks flushed with color. He coughs and says, “Should I call you John?”

Barnes shakes his head. That name doesn’t belong to him, not the way Barnes does.

“One last question,” Steve says. “How did you get here so fast?”

Barnes walks over to the sliding door that leads out onto the balcony, Steve trailing behind him. He points to the apartment block that’s visible through the doors. “I live there.”

Steve’s head snaps around. “You mean to tell me we’ve been neighbors for nearly a year?!”

Barnes can’t hold back the smirk that tugs at his lips. With the way Steve’s glaring at him, he’s probably lucky he doesn’t get punched in the face.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

It’s been two weeks since Barnes had come over for dinner, and in that time, Steve has probably thought of messaging him only about a thousand times. He’d be worried, if he wasn’t already used to his intense reaction to Barnes.

It’s all of a piece with the need that’s ridden him since they met—that urgent compulsion to not fail Barnes, whether it’s by helping him, or protecting him. It seemed to originate from his hindbrain, bypassing all his thought processes.

But now that he’s properly met Barnes, he feels less driven by it, as pulled in by everything about Barnes. There’s so much that Steve wants to know; how he spends his days, why he doesn’t sleep much, if he’s taking care of himself, if he’s happy.

He looks down at the phone in his hands. 

_Just do it. Send a message. Fuck plausible excuse._

His phone suddenly buzzes. He nearly fumbles it when he sees Barnes’s name on the screen.

Barnes: Are you free tonight?

Heart in his throat, Steve sends back _, yes._

Barnes: I have a favor to ask, so if you could come by around 7, i’ll order pizza

Three little dots appear on the screen as he’s still staring at it in shock. With the amount of time those dots dance on the screen, Steve expects a pretty long message, but all he gets is:

Barnes: If that’s okay with you

 _Sure!_ he replies, and instantly regrets the exclamation mark. _7 is good for me. See you then :)._

Did that sound too eager? He groans. It definitely sounded too eager. Too late now.

After what seems like an eternity, but is objectively about one and a half hours, he rings Barnes’s doorbell, bowl of salad in hand. He hears… is that meowing? Then, the sound of a _lot_ of locks and latches being turned. The door swings open to reveal Barnes. Steve stares, caught as always by Barnes’s beautiful gray eyes, the black Henley he has on making them seem to glow. His hair is still damp from the shower, the longer hair of his fringe already beginning to curl slightly as it dries. Steve’s gaze slides down a lean torso, to long, jean-clad legs. 

A movement catches Steve’s attention; a small black cat, with white front paws, winding itself around Barnes’s ankles. 

“You have a cat,” Steve says, stating the obvious like an idiot.

Barnes looks down at the cat with a bemused expression on his face. “I think it’s more a case of a cat has me.”

Steve is so hopelessly charmed that it takes him a moment to think of something to say. “What’s her name?"

“Noski.”

“Nyaski?” He tries to copy Barnes's nasal intonation. “Is that Russian? What does it mean?”

There's a slight hesitation before Barnes says, “Socks.”

“You named your cat ‘socks’,” Steve says, “because of her... socks.” He can’t quite keep the laughter out of his voice.

Barnes gives an embarrassed shrug. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

And Steve… he looks at this beautiful man with the kind heart who’d survived years of torture and captivity and finally admits to himself just how much trouble he’s in.

“Do you want to come inside?” Barnes says.

“Right.” He blinks. “Right. Yes, I do.” He steps through the doorway, still feeling disoriented.

“Can I...?” Barnes gestures to the bowl in his hands.

He looks down. “Oh.” He holds out the salad. “Yes. For dinner.”

“Thank you,” Barnes says, with a quizzical look, before he takes the bowl from Steve’s hands.

 _Get it together, Rogers._ He crouches down and clicks his tongue to attract Noski’s attention, scared of what his eyes might reveal if he looks at Barnes. She approaches him warily, and after sniffing his fingers, decides he passes muster and lets him scratch her under her chin.

He steals a moment to look around Barnes’s apartment while he pets Noski. Barnes has lived in it for months, and yet it’s about as personal as a hotel room. 

The furniture looks second-hand, and there are several cobbled-together shelves around the room made from stacked cinder blocks and planks. Oddly enough, they’re all empty. The books he sees are all scattered on the side tables, except for a battered copy of Dune lying facedown on the coffee table. Steve winces at the condition of the spine. All the curtains are drawn.

When boots appear in his peripheral vision, Steve startles and looks up. Damn, but Barnes could move without making a sound.

“About that favor…” Barnes says, standing almost at attention. “It’s about Noski.”

“Okay?” He continues to pet Noski, letting Barnes work up to his request. She purrs and rubs herself against his knee.

“I need to go away for a few days,” Barnes says. “Would you be able to take her while I’m gone? The pet hotel I use is full up right now. She won’t be any trouble, can’t scratch anything up, she was already de-clawed when I found her. She has no claws… why would anyone do that to a cat? How is she to protect herself?” Barnes looks at Noski with bewilderment in his eyes.

That Barnes will still worry about a cat that can’t defend herself, even after suffering so much worse at the hands of Hydra… well, it just strengthens Steve’s resolve to do everything he can to make sure Barnes has a chance at a normal life, away from anyone that might want to hurt him, or use him.

Barnes continues, “I’ve got everything you’ll need to—”

“It’s okay, Barnes,” Steve says gently, “I’m happy to take her.”

The rest of Barnes’s words register. He lurches upright, causing Noski to scramble away. “You’re going somewhere?”

Of course that’s the moment Barnes chooses to turn away and walk towards the fridge. “Would you like some beer?” he asks over his shoulder.

Steve narrows his eyes. “Are you—Is it about Hydra?”

Barnes stiffens and turns back to face him. “Steve…”

“Look, I follow the news, I know someone’s been taking Hydra apart and I'm pretty sure it’s you.” At the wary look that crosses Barnes’s face, Steve says, “I won’t tell anyone. And for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing something good.”

There’s a bitter twist to Barnes’s mouth but he doesn’t say anything. Steve wants so much to hug Barnes in that moment that his arms ache with it.

“Just—” There’s so much Steve wants to say, but in the end, all he says is, “Be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” Barnes says quietly.

“How long will you be gone?”

“Maybe a week, maybe less. It depends.”

“Oh.” It’s okay, he thinks, Barnes will be fine. If the news reports are accurate, he’s already done this quite a few times, and made it back safe each and every time.

It doesn’t help all that much.

Dinner is a quiet affair. Since Barnes doesn’t have a TV, or any entertainment devices that Steve can see, they sit at the dining table and eat in companionable silence. There’s a strangely familiar comfort to it, like being able to stretch out under a warm blanket after being cold for too long.

After they finish eating, they carry their plates into the kitchen. Steve stops dead in his tracks when he spots the bright yellow rubber glove hanging over the lip of the sink. It looks so cheerful and out of place in Barnes’s spare apartment, like a bumblebee that had blundered into a winter landscape. He turns wide eyes on Barnes.

Barnes gives him a resigned look, and holds out his metal hand. “No grip.”

“Right.” Steve nods. “Slippery when wet.”

Barnes’s eyes narrow. It should be terrifying, because Barnes has a very effective murder face, but Steve’s not in the least bit scared. Probably another sign of how Barnes had screwed up his wiring.

“Go on,” Steve says. “Put it on.”

Barnes gives him a flat stare as he pulls on the glove and holds up his hand. “Happy now?”

“Yup.”

“You rinse,” Barnes says, and points at the spot next to him.

Steve chokes back a laugh. “Is that any way to treat your guest?”

“You laughed at my glove. Your guest rights got revoked.”

And that’s how he ends up doing the dishes next to Barnes. He keeps stealing glances as they work; at the brief flashes of silver in the gap between the eye-watering yellow of the glove and the pushed-up sleeve of his henley, at the crows’ feet that fan out from the corner of Barnes’s eye, the clean line of his profi—

“You’re going to drop that if you don’t keep an eye on what you’re doing.”

Steve jerks his attention back to the plate in his hand. “I can multitask,” he mutters, while he pretends his cheeks aren’t hot with embarrassment.

Once the dishes and utensils are dried and put away in Barnes’s too-bare cabinet, Barnes walks him back to his apartment. They’ve got Noski, meowing non-stop in her pet carrier, as well as her food, and toys. 

“I should go,” Barnes says, once they get Noski set up. He picks her up and cradles her in his arms. After a few whispered words to her, he deposits her in Steve’s arms.

Steve’s gut tightens with the fear he’s been trying to hold off all evening. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says, as he adjusts his hold on Noski, his words coming out sharper than intended.

There’s an odd moment when Barnes’s arm twitches up, before it falls back to his side. He nods, opens the door and steps out. 

Steve watches Barnes walk away. Noski gives a forlorn meow as Barnes disappears around the corner after one brief glance back. “You and me, both,” he whispers, as he bumps the door shut with his hip and buries his nose in Noski’s fur.

He gets the feeling he’s really going to appreciate having her around over the next few days.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

Barnes swipes the screen of his phone to read Steve’s latest update on Noski.

After a long day of dull surveillance, followed by short, concentrated bursts of violence, the nightly messages were something he looked forward to. He’d lie in his motel bed and exchange messages with Steve, while wondering if there was another conversation going on underneath the one they were having about Noski.

Every sketch of Noski Steve sends him feels like a gift. He makes sure to save all of them to a special folder on his phone.

Tonight, he doesn’t reply. Just reads the message, pockets his phone, and continues walking.

Less than a minute later, he knocks on Steve’s door. A smile tugs at his lips when he hears the sound of meowing, followed by Steve’s voice, as though in answer to Noski. Footsteps approach the door, there’s the sound of latches being hurriedly turned, and then the door is yanked open.

“Barnes!” Steve scans him with his eyes. “You’re okay?”

Steve’s voice is a little breathless, and for some reason, he’s having some difficulty breathing, too. He opens his mouth, not entirely sure what will come out, but is distracted when Noski starts rubbing herself against his leg, meowing insistently and demanding attention.

He picks her up and cradles her to his chest, ignoring the discomfort from the bullet lodged in his back. She starts purring and stretches up to rub her cheek against his chin. He’s missed her purr.

“Not exactly,” he says, in response to Steve’s question.

It’d been a freak accident involving a lousy shot and a lucky ricochet. He was going to take it out himself—he could’ve managed it even one-handed—but he’d remembered kind hands and concerned blue eyes. He was already putting down the knife before he was even aware of having made a decision. He hopes Steve doesn’t mind having to cut him open again.

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly’.” Steve’s hands reach out like he’s about to start patting him down, but they end up hovering over him instead. “Oh my god, come _in._ ”

Ten minutes later, he’s sitting on a stool in Steve’s bathroom, shirt off, with a very concerned Steve behind him. Noski’s yowls drift through the open doorway from where she’s locked in her pet carrier. Neither of them thought it’d be a good idea to cut Barnes open with a curious cat underfoot.

Steve picks up a packet of antiseptic wipes, looks Barnes squarely in the eye, and tears it open with a belligerent expression on his face. Barnes decides it’s probably best to remain silent.

He watches Steve in the mirror as he cleans the entry point with the wipes, warmed by the care in his movements.

“I can’t believe you’re making me do this again,” Steve says.

He catches Steve’s doleful eyes in the cabinet mirror and shrugs in apology. It’s not lost on him how quick he is to trust Steve at his back with a knife. Steve’s core of integrity has a very familiar feel to it.

“How long have you been walking around like this?”

“Since yesterday evening,” Barnes replies.

Steve’s hands still and he frowns at Barnes’s back. “Yesterday? But—” He touches the almost-healed entry wound. Then his gaze flicks up to meet Barnes’s eyes in the mirror, face pale and looking like he’s going to be sick.

So. That answered the question of whether Steve had seen the decrypted pages of his file. “The accelerated healing wasn’t in that file.” Hydra had a lot of files on him. Seventy years was a long time.

“I’m—” Steve swallows hard. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have looked—”

“It’s okay,” he rasps.

When the file had first been decrypted, it was like being back on that table, with his chest cracked open for anyone to come and paw through his vital organs. Knowing that at least one person, that _Steve_ saw him as more than just a Hydra-created monster, or a pitiful victim, had made the sense of violation a little easier to ignore.

Steve looks like he wants to say more, but whatever he sees in Barnes’s face must change his mind, because all he says instead is, “Ready?” 

Their eyes meet in the mirror. He nods, grateful that Steve lets the subject drop.

Steve pushes up his glasses, and takes one deep breath. Then he applies the scalpel to Barnes’s skin. His strong, sure, artist’s hands accomplish the task in minutes, dropping the bullet into the plugged sink to be cleaned and discarded somewhere far away. While Steve’s dressing the cut, Barnes turns his head to catch Steve’s eye. Their gazes catch and hold.

Barnes says, “Thank you.”

Steve nods, his smile soft and sad. He gently strokes down the edges of the surgical tape holding the gauze in place. It feels almost like a caress, and Barnes finds himself leaning into the touch.

If home is a place where he feels safe enough to let down his guard, then he’s home.

 

**Chapter 3**

 

Barnes runs through the dark, breath coming loud in his ears. He’s breaking discipline, making too much noise, running in bare feet because he didn’t even stop to put on his boots. But he needs to see Steve. Needs to see that he’s alive. The dream—

He scales the wall, fingers and toes finding purchase with ease on the brick facade. When he reaches Steve’s bedroom window, he jimmies the screen lock and climbs in.

The tightness in his chest eases. Steve’s there, curled up safe in his blanket. In the dim glow of a small night light, he looks so very beautiful.

Knees suddenly going weak, Barnes slumps back against the wall and slides down to sit on the floor. He curls his arms around his knees, rests his chin on his forearm, and watches Steve breathe, slow and deep.

Just a little longer, he tells himself, and then he’ll go.

He’s not sure how long he’s been sitting there when Steve’s eyelids drift up. Barnes stops breathing. 

Steve blinks at him, eyes unfocused, like he’s still lost somewhere in a dream. “Bucky,” he breathes, sweet and welcoming, and Barnes feels like his chest is cracking open.

Then Steve blinks again, and awareness floods his eyes. “Barnes?” He sits up and fumbles for his glasses. “What’s wrong?”

Barnes shakes his head, unable to explain the wordless panic that had driven him here.

Steve gets out of bed and drops to his knees, reaching out slowly to place his hand on the skin of Barnes’s hand. “God, you’re cold!” Steve drags the blanket off his bed and throws it over Barnes, before lifting up one corner. “Can I...?”

Barnes nods.

Steve slides in and leans against him. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I dreamed—” Barnes swallows convulsively. “I dreamed you were dead. They told me you were dead.”

“Who did?” Steve asks, sounding shaken.

“The doctor. Hydra.” They told him Steve was dead and no one was coming for him and that was when he’d died for the second time.

“Hey, no. I’m here. I’m okay.” Steve places a hand on his back and starts rubbing small circles, movements slow and careful, always so careful not to startle him. “Is this okay?”

He nods, unable to speak. Muscles taut with tension start to relax, and he lets himself lean a little more into Steve. It feels like a part of himself, one that had lain dormant for years, begins to unfurl in the warmth seeping into him from Steve’s body.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Steve asks.

He shakes his head.

“Okay.”

They sit in the dark, bodies pressed together under the blanket. The rubbing motion of Steve’s hand becomes gradually more erratic, until it finally stops, and Steve’s head tips sideways onto his shoulder.

Does it mean something that Steve feels safe enough with him to fall asleep against him? Even if it doesn’t to Steve, it does to Barnes.

He studies Steve’s sleeping face. Awake and in motion, Steve vibrates with the energy of his outsize personality. But quiet like this, in repose, Barnes can finally appreciate the delicate line of Steve’s cheekbones, the long sweep of his lashes, the plush curve of his lips. 

The only thing that keeps him from looking angelic is his nose. Too big for his face, and with a bump indicative of having been broken at least once before. Really, there could be no nose more befitting Steve Rogers.

He lets himself enjoy the feel of Steve’s body against his for a little longer. Then, moving slowly so he doesn’t disturb Steve’s sleep, he picks Steve up in his arms and returns him to bed. Steve makes a protesting sound when he’s laid down, and curls his hand around Barnes's shirt.

Barnes freezes, caught by the gentle possessiveness of that movement, but he makes himself pull away after taking a moment to free his shirt from Steve’s grip. He covers Steve with the blanket, takes off his glasses and places them on the nightstand.

Then, he quietly slips out the window, making sure the screen lock catches behind him.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

It’s not quite eight the next morning when Barnes answers a knock on the door and finds Steve standing there.

Barnes frowns at the light jacket Steve’s thrown over his plain gray t-shirt and sweatpants. It's barely enough to protect him from the late autumn air on the walk over.

“Did I wake you?” Steve asks, looking apologetic.

Barnes shakes his head, and steps back to let Steve in. He hadn't managed to sleep after getting back to his apartment, and had spent the rest of the night exploring Wikipedia.

After locking the door, he goes into the kitchen and says over his shoulder, “Have you eaten?”

“No. I kinda… came straight here.” Steve’s voice is muffled as he bends over to pet Noski, who’s happily winding herself round and round his ankles.

A few more rashers of bacon get added to the skillet.

“You could’ve stayed, you know, last night,” Steve says from behind him. “I wouldn’t have minded.”

Barnes turns to stare at Steve. A pale pink wash of color tints Steve's cheeks as he ducks his head and toys with the sleeve of his jacket, pulling it down till only the tips of his fingers can be seen.

This, too, feels like a gift. “I’ll keep that in mind if it happens again,” he says. This earns him a small smile which disappears all too quickly.

Steve remains withdrawn all through breakfast, only breaking the silence when he's almost finished eating. “In your dream,” he says, while he pushes the last of his scrambled eggs around on the plate. “How did I die?”

Barnes sets down his fork and studies Steve’s bent head. “You crashed your plane. They showed me a newspaper. It was on the front page.”

“Like Captain America?”

The odd question sends a curl of unease through him. “Yes.”

“I dream about dying, sometimes.” Steve scrapes his eggs into a small pile, the sound of his fork against the plate setting Barnes’s teeth on edge. “It’s always the same. It’s cold. Dark. I think—I think I drown.”

Barnes remembers a night light in a bedroom. The curl of unease turns into a cold finger dragging its way down his spine.

“I dream about you, too,” Steve continues. “Or at least, someone who looks a lot like you.”

“You dream of Bucky Barnes?”

Steve nods. “I think it’s him.” He rubs his temple. “I dream about him—” His voice hitches, then he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. “I dream about saving him.”

Barnes’s food turns to lead in his stomach. For some reason, he’d expected Steve to say ‘falling’. “What happens?” he says, voice sounding strained to his own ears. “In your dream where you save him?”

“It’s pretty confusing. Running through lots of corridors. Looking in empty rooms. I keep thinking ‘no one’s ever come back from it’. I don’t know why I’m thinking it, I just know it terrifies me.” Steve sets down his fork with a quiet clink as his eyes go distant. “Then I see someone coming out of a room. Short guy, round glasses”—Zola, Barnes thinks as his skin crawls, he saw Zola—“and that’s where I find Bucky. In that room. He’s strapped to a table, pretty out of it, just repeating name, rank, and serial number. I think he’s been—” Steve cuts himself off and swallows convulsively.

Tortured, Barnes thinks. Experimented on. Injected with a bastardized version of the serum that ran through Captain America’s veins.

A room and a cold metal table, memories tinted steel gray and rust red, the tang of iron on his tongue. _The fist of Hydra_ , Zola had called him. His stomach churns at the memory of that reedy voice, full of pride and an unwholesome possessiveness.

 _Don_ _’t think of that._

So he thinks of the dream instead, of how impossible it is that Steve had dreamed of something that had happened long before he was born.

That was one of the earliest memories Barnes had recovered, back when his memories were still like puzzle pieces in a box, chaotic and disordered, jumbled together with the lies Hydra had fed him to keep him compliant.

When a few pieces slotted together, and he could get a glimpse at the whole, memory would accrete around the fragment. If it was from a time after he’d been given the serum, then he would remember with an almost painful clarity; scent, sound, sensation, all would come rushing back.

That moment, when Steve had found him on Zola’s table, that was one of those memories. He remembered looking up and seeing Steve, different but still so beautiful, and thinking _oh good, I_ _’m dreaming_ , because dreams were his only escape by that point. 

And now, to hear that this Steve had dreamed that exact same memory…?

Barnes had done a background check on Steve as soon as the first memories came trickling back. He’d found Steve’s employment file, and medical records. He’d looked at high school yearbook photos.

All the evidence confirmed that Steven Brendan Rogers had been born twenty-eight years ago.

And still he sometimes wonders if his Steve, his Captain, had somehow survived the Valkyrie, been restored to his pre-serum self, and set up a life for himself. That’s how familiar this present-day Steve feels to him.

“When I was a kid,” Steve says, unaware of the turmoil he's caused, “I used to think I was him. Captain America reborn. Some kind of stupid wish fulfillment, I guess, the scrawny kid who’s going to grow up to be a great hero. I even researched past lives and reincarnation.” There’s an edge to his tone; a little defiant, a little embarrassed, like he’s waiting to be made fun of. “The dreams weren’t even, I don’t know… glorious? They were mostly of pain, and of dying, and—” his voice softens, “and of Bucky.”

“It was dumb,” Steve says, tone acid with self-mockery. “Me… Captain America reborn.” He looks down at his plate. “It took a lot of therapy, but I’m over that now…”

He wasn’t. Barnes could read it clear as day.

Reincarnation… was it possible? 

Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that the last scrap of his Steve that had lived in his memory for decades—the voice that he’d clung to without even knowing why—had fallen silent after he’d met this Steve. Maybe it wasn’t even coincidence that had led him to that parking lot.

His attention is drawn back to Steve when Steve puts down his fork and hunches over. In the gray morning light, Steve looks tired and old beyond his years, like he carries the weight of too many losses on his soul.

Barnes sets aside thoughts of reincarnation and, remembering the simple comfort of touch that Steve had offered him the night before, he places his hand on Steve’s shoulder. Steve gives him a startled glance.

“Steve Rogers was a hero even without the serum,” Barnes says. “He just wanted to do what was right. Like you.” Steve opens his mouth, but Barnes carries on. “The only thing the serum changed was the scope of what he could achieve.”

He lets go of Steve and looks down at his metal hand. “Sometimes I think the serum was a curse. I think he could never have been happy, never been able to set down the burden his abilities placed on him.”

He gets up and walks to the sink with his plate, very aware of Steve’s eyes on him. “Take it from me, if you have a chance to be happy, don’t waste it.”

“You don’t just look like him, do you,” Steve says with dawning awareness, “you _are_ him... Bucky Barnes.”

Something inside him cringes at the thought of what Steve, the Steve he’d grown up with and fought beside, the Steve who’d sacrificed himself so he could save millions, would think of what he’d become.

A gun, a weapon, a monster. The Fist of Hydra.

“Bucky Barnes died a long time ago,” he says. He turns on the tap, starts rinsing off the skillet he’d left soaking in the sink.

He’d made a serious tactical error, letting his guard down and revealing too much.

“The way you spoke about Captain America,” Steve says, voice almost vibrating with suppressed excitement, “it’s like you knew him.” 

“Maybe I have a good imagination.”

Steve moves to stand next to him, a determined look in his eyes. Barnes knows that look all too well. He continues scrubbing at the skillet even though it’s already spotless.

“Do you know your accent changes when you talk about him?”

Did it? He turns off the tap and stares down at his hands. “Do I look a hundred years old to you?”

“Well… you have that accelerated healing thing. What’s to say that doesn’t slow down your aging as well? I mean, aging’s just what happens when your cells lose the ability to regenerate, right?”

“Bucky Barnes died trying to protect Steve Rogers. That’s his legacy. Not—” His hands curl into fists and the servos in his arm whine in protest. There’s a short, shocked silence followed by a tentative touch on his arm.

“I’m sorry.” Steve’s eyes are very blue, wide and contrite. “I was out of line.”

But Steve isn’t out of line. In fact, he has every right to ask.

Barnes can’t do it, though. Can’t bring himself to tell Steve the truth. He doesn’t know what it’ll do to him to see the light in Steve’s eyes turn to disappointment, to be compared to Bucky Barnes and found wanting. He shakes his head, but can’t think of anything to say.

“I should go,” Steve says. He waits a beat, but the hope in his eyes dims in the face of Barnes's determined silence. “I’ll let myself out.” Steve gives him one last look before he turns and walks away.

Barnes remains frozen at the sink long after he hears the apartment door close. His heart aches with a dull, heavy pain as he finally admits to himself that he hadn't stayed just to keep Steve safe.

He’s nothing but a sneak and a thief. He’d tried to steal some happiness for himself, happiness he’s lost all right to, while hoping that fate wouldn’t notice him, and call his accounts due.

He should've known better.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

Steve turns over in the bed and punches his pillow a few times. Then he grabs his phone and squints at the screen. 2.37 a.m. Great. It’s been two days since he last heard from Barnes. Two long days of silence, and two long nights spent tossing and turning in his bed.

Yesterday morning, he’d walked over to Barnes’s apartment and knocked until he’d heard Noski’s meow from the other side of the door. Every muscle in his body had gone weak with relief at that sound—if she was still there, then so was Barnes.

There’s a soft click, followed by the sound of his window sliding up. He’s already reaching for his baseball bat—just in case it’s not the person he’s hoping to see—when Barnes slips into his room, silent as a ghost. 

“Barnes! Where’ve you—” Steve shakes his head. No. He promised himself he wouldn’t pressure Barnes.

“Ask me what you want to know,” Barnes rasps.

Steve can’t see much in the dim light, but Barnes sounds grim, resolved—like a man facing down a firing squad.

“No,” Steve says. “It’s none of my business.”

He’d let himself get so caught up in the hope that Barnes might actually be Bucky Barnes, the guy he’s dreamed about his whole life, his literal ‘dream guy’, that he’d failed to see how Barnes had shut down right before his eyes.

And there was also the furtive hope that Barnes could finally settle the question that had plagued him his whole life. Because no matter what he told himself, no matter what he told others, deep down, a part of him refused to give up the belief that in his past life, he’d been Captain America. 

In short, he’d been callous, and thoughtless, and selfish.

“I’m sorry, Barnes. I shouldn't have pushed.”

“You have a right to know,” Barnes says.

Steve jerks upright and reaches out to turn on the bedside lamp.

“Please,” Barnes says. “Don’t turn on the light.”

Steve pulls his hand back. He flips back the covers, shifts to make room, and pats the space next to him. “At least come and sit?”

After a brief hesitation where Steve can’t hear anything over the pounding of his heart, Barnes walks over and sits down on the bed with his back to Steve. All Steve can see of his face is a shadowed jawline, tight with tension.  

“It’s okay, Steve. Just ask.”

“You’re really”—Steve’s voice wavers—“You’re really Bucky?”

“What’s left of him.”

A small sound escapes Steve.

“It’s not so bad,” Barnes says to the quiet air of the bedroom. “I survived, didn’t I?”

“I’m gonna—” Steve stops and tries again. “Can I hug you?”

When he sees Barnes’s head dip in a tiny nod, he shuffles forward until he can lean sideways against Barnes’s back and wrap his arms around a firmly muscled waist. He presses his face into the space between Barnes’s shoulder blades and breathes in his warm, clean scent. “I’m glad you did,” Steve says fiercely, “and I’m glad you found me.” 

Barnes doesn’t say anything, but the way he wraps one broad hand carefully around Steve’s wrist seems answer enough.

“You really think I’m him? The Captain?”

He’d spent so many years wondering, wishing, yet now that he finally has to chance to get an answer, he’s not sure he’s ready. He draws breath to ask for a few more minutes, but it’s too late. Barnes is already answering.

“That dream of yours,” Barnes says softly. “I was there. It wasn’t just a dream. You have his memories.” Barnes turns his head to the side, the night light throwing his profile into stark relief. “But you’re still _you,_ Steve, just that whatever it was that made him special… I recognize it in you.”

Steve lets out a shaky breath. That was the half-formed fear he hadn’t even been able to articulate to himself—that he’d become overshadowed by his past life, in his eyes, and in Barnes’s.

“My parents were huge fans of Captain America.” Steve rests his cheek against Barnes’s back. “There were lots of books about him in the house. We went to a lot of exhibitions. I tried to tell myself that my dreams were just my subconscious pulling together everything I’d seen and read. But some of the things I dreamed about… they weren’t in any museum exhibit or history book.”

“What sorts of things?”

“Do you have a scar on your left hip, sort of C-shaped, about three inches long?” He nearly taps the spot with his finger, but stops himself—he doesn’t have permission to do more than hug.

A sudden tension fills Barnes. “Yes,” he says. “Do you know—” Barnes clears his throat. “Can you tell me how I got it.”

“We were… maybe eight or ten?” Steve says. “Playing stick ball in the street. Then you hit the ball through Mr. O’Leary’s front window. I—He… _Steve_ wanted to stay and apologize, but you grabbed him and ran. You were so busy looking behind you that you ran into a bicycle—scraped your hip pretty bad on the handlebar. You scratched up your knees too, when you fell, but those didn’t leave a scar.”

Steve licks his lips and chooses his words with care. “Do you not… remember this?” Maybe it was just his imagination, but something about the way Barnes had asked had set alarm bells ringing.

“They—Hydra, they took my memories, wiped them away,” Barnes says, voice flat and almost too soft for Steve to hear. “Then they’d tell me things, feed me lies, to get me to do what they wanted. But I’d get… confused. So they’d wipe me and start again. I don’t—I don’t remember everything from my life before.”

“Barnes,” Steve whispers, horror stealing his breath, “what did they do to you?”

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

Barnes takes a deep breath and draws strength from the feel of Steve pressed close against him. “Zola—the man you saw in your dream—he was a scientist,” he says.

“No, I—” Steve lets go and rears back. “I wasn’t really asking, you don’t have to answer.”

Barnes had known Steve hadn’t meant it as a real question, but this is what he’d come here to do, after all. He owes Steve an explanation for betraying everything that his Steve stood for. It’s just taken him this long to gather up the courage to do it.

And what he does after making that explanation… it all depends on Steve.

“I need to do this,” he says.

There’s a silence behind him, then Steve says, “Okay.” Steve wraps his arms around him and leans against his back. “Okay,” Steve says again.

Barnes takes a few deep breaths. “Zola developed his own version of the supersoldier serum,” he says. “Gave it to me before Steve found me in that dream of yours. It’s probably why I didn’t die when I fell from the train. Hydra found me, gave me this arm, or the first version of it, anyway. And then… And then they broke me. I broke. I should’ve—” _Tried harder_. “I killed so many people, Steve.”

“Everybody breaks.” Steve’s voice is gentle but full of a quiet rage. “Sooner or later, everybody breaks. I don’t know what those—those _bastards_ did to you, but I saw the scars, cut out the things they put inside you. I’m sure they’re capable of things that no one could’ve withstood. _No one._ ” Steve’s arms tighten around him. “All the things they made you do, you had no choice. You are not to blame.”

“My hands,” he says through a throat that feels full of glass. He’d killed not just combatants, but civilians. Even women, children… He squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to see. He will never get his hands clean again.

There’s a long moment where the only sound is Steve’s furious breathing behind him. “I hate them,” Steve says with venom in his voice. “I hate them for what they did to you. I’d kill them for you if I could.”

He grips Steve’s wrist, part of him soothed by the fierceness of Steve’s response. But mostly, he’s terrified that Steve might actually have the opportunity to try. Steve, in any form, is not to be underestimated.

Then Steve exhales, and some of the tension leaves his body. “But I get it,” he says. “I know guilt’s not logical.” Steve tugs his wrist free of Barnes’s grasp and tangles their fingers together. “For what it’s worth, I believe you’re a good man, whatever you were forced to do. Hydra couldn’t change that. I don’t think anything can.”

Barnes looks down, unable to fully accept what Steve said, and yet needing so desperately to believe it. His insides feel scraped raw, exposed and vulnerable, like a festering wound exposed to cold, bracing air. He needs to get away, to hide, to rebuild his defenses. Sometimes the fire of Steve’s presence hurts.

For one brief moment, he considers leaving and not coming back. But when he thinks about never seeing Steve again, he knows he can’t go through with it.

He pulls his hand free of Steve’s. “I should go.” He’s up and heading for the window the moment Steve releases him.

There’s a sound of blankets being thrown back, then feet hitting the floor. “Barnes,” Steve says, voice tight and panicked. “Please don’t leave. Don’t… disappear. Say you’ll still be here in the morning.”

Barnes nods, climbs out the window, and tries not to look back. 

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

All his life, Steve had carried an ache inside of him, a hollow place that echoed with a grief he'd never been able to explain. Even as a child, he’d known it wasn’t a physical thing, that instead, it had everything to do with the boy he always dreamed about.

As he got older, he’d become so used to it that he hardly noticed it anymore. He was only really conscious of it when he woke from his dreams, breathless from missing someone who’d been dead for over seventy years.

So that’s why it takes him a while to notice that the ache was gone, that he felt lighter, whole. Somehow, in the space of the seven months since Barnes had come crashing back into his life, Barnes had slipped into that empty place and filled it with his quiet presence.

They fit together like they’ve known each other all their lives. And now, he finally understands why.

And if he wishes they were more than just friends… well, from the way Barnes’s eyes sometimes linger a little too long, he doesn’t think he’s the only one. But now, that chance might be lost, because last night, he’d had one terrifying moment when he’d been _sure_ that he’d never see Barnes again.

_Are we still on for the market?_

Steve stares at the text and hits send. He waits and waits and waits and his heart thumps uncomfortably in his chest when a reply comes through: _yes._

He sucks in a breath. Barnes didn’t disappear in the night.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

“Everything all right, Steve?”

Steve blinks and turns back to Annie. “Sorry?” he says.

She watches him with a mix of concern and amusement on her lined face as she hands over his change. “Barnes seems… I can’t quite put my finger on it, but he’s not just his usual quiet self.”

They both turn to study Barnes, who’s at the next stall, choosing a loaf of sourdough bread.

Steve doesn’t know how to answer Annie. He’s pretty sure it’s his fault that Barnes seems more like the hollow-eyed man Steve had first met than the man who had a knack for getting all the best produce with that shy, sweet smile of his.

He turns back and hopes she can’t see the guilt in his eyes. “Maybe he had a bad night.” He should probably feel worse about playing on Annie’s sympathies. Most of the market people believe Barnes is a vet, and in a way, he is, except that his war had gone on for longer than most people had been alive.

Annie nods. Then her eyes sharpen on Steve. “You don’t seem your usual self, either. Did you two have a fight?”

Steve ducks his head. “You know it’s not like that between us.”

Her gaze turns sympathetic. Yeah… he’s pretty sure most of the market people also know how he feels about Barnes.

“Doesn’t have to be anything going on for the two of you to fight,” Annie says. “You two clearly care about each other.”

Steve steals a glance at Barnes, who’s making his way back to Steve’s side. Steve prays he can’t hear Annie’s words over the din of the market.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

The drive back is quiet. Barnes spends most of his time staring out the window, while Steve tries to find something to say that will fix things between them.

“Barnes,” he says, not taking his eyes off the road. “I just want you to know that finding out you’re really Bucky Barnes… it doesn’t change anything for me. I mean, it doesn’t change how I”— _just say it, Steve_ —“how I feel about you.”

Barnes turns away from the window to look at Steve.

“Well, that’s not really true,” Steve continues. “It makes me respect you even more.”

For a long moment, the only sound in the car is the hum of traffic and the music coming from the radio. “I’m not him anymore,” Barnes says quietly. “The man you dream about. I’m not him.”

“I don’t expect you to be.” Steve grips the steering wheel with sweaty hands. “I don’t _want_ you to be. I never met him, Barnes. I met _you._ ”

And as of a few months ago, it also wasn’t technically true that Barnes wasn’t the man Steve dreamed about. It’s just that _those_ dreams aren’t the sort that Steve can share with Barnes. He hopes to, though, if they can get past this odd turn in their relationship.

Barnes doesn’t say anything for the rest of the car ride home, but Steve feels the weight of his troubled gaze on him again and again.

“Come up for lunch?” Steve asks, trying to sound casual. He switches off the engine after pulling into his parking space.

When Barnes hesitates, Steve blurts out, “I got everything ready already.” Which is a bald-faced lie because their Sunday lunches are always sandwiches made from the day’s market finds.

Barnes gives him an unreadable look, but then he nods his head, and doesn’t call Steve out on his lie.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

Barnes follows Steve into the apartment, still trying to process what Steve had said in the car. He wouldn’t have believed it, but the way Steve had said it, and the conviction in his eyes… Maybe the patched-up, cobbled-together person he is now is enough, maybe he can just be Barnes. There’s a strange sensation inside him, like a tourniquet being released. For the first time since Zola’s serum had spread like acid through his veins, he feels almost settled in his own skin.

That easing of internal pressure lets him see beyond his own worries, and wonder if Steve also compares himself to his past self. Did he worry he wasn’t enough? He is to Barnes, but he’s still glad he’d gotten to know Steve first, without the knowledge of who he was in his past life getting in the way.

Steve throws him a guilty look as he’s getting out his chopping block, knife, and plates for the sandwich fixings. Barnes ducks his head and looks through the market bags so Steve doesn’t catch him smiling.

In the middle of rinsing off the tomatoes, Steve’s phone beeps with an incoming message.

“One of Sam’s vets needs a night watchman for his warehouse,” Steve says, after he reads the message. There’s a tension in his shoulders that’s at odds with the casual tone of his voice. “It’s a temporary thing, just for a few weeks. If you’re interested, Sam’ll put in a good word for you.”

Barnes pauses in the middle of buttering slices of sourdough. “Sam will,” he says.

Things may have improved since the first awkward dinner between the three of them, but Sam still doesn’t exactly approve of Steve’s friendship with him. He doesn’t blame Sam in the least, because in Sam’s shoes, he wouldn’t want Steve befriending a killer like himself either.

“You’re a good guy, Barnes.” Steve frowns at him, fierce and determined, a fire in his eyes that Barnes recognizes. It’s the look Steve gets before fists start flying. “Sam can tell.”

He may have been that once, but he’s not so sure anymore. And there’s no good reason for him to accept.

He’s cleared all the bases that he can get to. Now he’s mostly going through the Widow’s data dump, using his knowledge of Hydra’s operations to make sense of the information so he can make anonymous tips. Money isn’t a problem. Even after giving away most of what he’d found at the various safe houses, he still has enough that the numbers make him a little lightheaded. 

And yet, his traitorous heart whispers, it will give him one more reason to stay.

“Please,” Steve says, “don’t say no straight away. Just—just think about it?” There’s a squeak as Steve switches off the tap, then he looks up and finally meets Barnes’s eyes. “I don’t want you to go.”

Barnes is the first to look away. “Alright,” he says. When Steve’s eyes brighten, Barnes hurriedly clarifies, “I’ll think about it.” He’s pretty sure he’s going to say yes, though. He never could deny Steve for long, in this life or his previous one. 

Steve visibly tamps down his enthusiasm until all that remains is a bright spark that lights his eyes all through lunch.

That night, as Barnes sits on the balcony with Noski warming his lap, he runs through his lists; fake identities he’s set up all over the country, locations of money and weapons caches, and escape routes from the apartment.

After one year without having to fall back on any of his contingency plans, he can’t help but hope he can keep this life he’s built for himself. If he’s honest, he’d started putting down roots the moment he’d woken up in Steve’s apartment that morning in April. He should’ve left months ago, but his need to remain near Steve had outweighed all good sense and training.

It’s greedy, and dangerous, and undeserved, but after everything he’s endured, was it so bad to let himself be selfish for a little longer?

He’ll go after the new year, he tells himself. He’ll go before Steve gets too attached. It’s already too late for him.

 

**Chapter 4**

Barnes blinks in surprise when Steve opens the door to let him in.

Instead of Steve’s usual at-home outfit of hoodie and sweatpants, Steve’s wearing a dark blue button-down that makes his hair look more gold than usual, and brings out the blue of his eyes. He’s also wearing his good blue jeans. He looks—

Barnes clears his throat and licks suddenly dry lips.

Then, he notices the high color of Steve’s cheeks, and the furtive look about him, eyes a little too wide behind the black rims of his glasses. He seems nervous yet resolute, possibly even a little scared.

“What are you up to?”

Steve straightens up to his full height, and his chin takes on a determined jut. “Nothing.”

Accelerated breathing. Pupils slightly dilated. The pulse in the hollow of Steve’s throat is fluttering faster than normal.

“Lie.”

He watches in fascination as Steve’s cheeks turn a deeper pink.

Steve snatches the box of Christmas lights from Barnes. “Are you coming in or not?” He stalks off, leaving Barnes to close the door behind him.

Barnes hangs up his coat and scans the interior of the apartment out of habit. His eyes come to a rest on the small sprig of mistletoe hanging right above Steve’s head. Steve, who’s standing with his shoulders back, chin out, like he’s ready for a fight. Not sure how he’s supposed to respond, he remains silent.

“Do you want to kiss me?” Steve asks, a determined frown on his face.

Panic claws at him.

“I know you think about it,” Steve says. It’s faint, but there’s a beseeching tone in Steve’s voice. “I’ve seen the way you look at me.”

No. Hide this. He’s supposed to hide this, Steve was never supposed to know.

The longer the silence drags on while fear clamps his throat, the more he can see the cracks showing in Steve’s confidence, the self-doubt creeping in. He thinks about Steve setting this all up; buying the mistletoe, getting the ladder out to hang it up, calling him with that excuse of not being able to find his Christmas lights, putting on a nice shirt and jeans…

He moves in front of Steve and touches his cheek with one finger. “Why are you doing this?”

Steve’s eyes are huge behind his glasses. “You told me that if I had a chance to be happy, I should take it. Well… I’m taking it.”

He ignores the ache in his chest. “Not with me.”

“Do you want to kiss me?” Steve repeats stubbornly.

 

 

It would be easy for him to lie. But he can’t do it, can’t hurt Steve like that, even for his own good. But he can’t say yes, either, the need to hide so ingrained in him.

Steve must see some of his struggle because his eyes soften. “If you don’t want me to kiss you, you can just step back. You don’t have to say anything, we don’t have to talk about it. It won’t change anything between us. I’m still your friend, no matter what.”

He curses himself for a selfish fool, but he doesn’t step back when Steve moves closer to him, close enough that their bodies almost brush.

Steve searches his eyes. Then slowly, he goes up on tiptoe… and finds that he can’t quite reach high enough. Steve slants him a sheepish glance. “Maybe I should have left the ladder out.”

How is he supposed to resist this, he thinks.

He leans down and kisses Steve. It’s just a light press of lips, and feels wholly new, without the feeling of familiarity that sometimes overlays his interactions with Steve. Then, Steve loops his arms around his neck and pulls him closer to deliver a series of soft, nibbling kisses until Barnes groans in frustration and hauls Steve against him.

Steve gives a soft, satisfied laugh and proceeds to kiss the hell out of him.

When Barnes finally straightens up from the kiss, Steve’s face is flushed and his eyes are dark and dazed behind glasses that sit slightly askew. Barnes doesn’t think he looks any more dignified.

“That went better than I hoped,” Steve says, a graveled edge to his deep voice that sends heat coiling through Barnes.

He straightens Steve’s glasses and tries to find the words to make Steve see—

“You’re regretting it already, aren’t you.”

“Steve…”

Hurt flashes in Steve’s eyes. “Was that a pity kiss? Because if it was, then fu—”

He puts a finger on Steve’s lips and shakes his head. Unhappiness weighs heavy on his heart. “You deserve better, Steve.”

“You don’t get to decide that, Barnes.”

So stubborn, his Steve. Always so stubborn.

“Don’t you get to be happy too?” Steve asks.

Little stolen scraps, maybe. But not this, not Steve, not something he’s wished for all his life.

When he steps back, Steve reluctantly lets him go. He already misses Steve’s warmth pressed against him. “That’s not for people like me.”

“People like you,” Steve growls. “You mean survivors?”

He shakes his head. Too many lives on his conscience, too much blood on his soul.

“I think I’m a pretty decent guy,” Steve says. “I think I know right from wrong, good from bad. And in my line of work, I’ve seen evil, I’ve seen victims, I’ve seen survivors. And I know you’re out there trying to stop Hydra.” Steve grips his metal hand. “You’re a good person, Barnes.”

The faith in Steve’s eyes physically pains him. He looks down. But he doesn’t pull away when Steve wraps him up in a hug. Despite Steve’s small stature, Barnes doesn’t think he’s ever felt safer.

“So,” Steve says after a few minutes. “Let’s go hang up those lights.”

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

Barnes had kissed him.

Barnes had _actually_ kissed him.

And now, he’s got Barnes sitting on the couch with him watching _It_ _’s a Wonderful Life_.

Well, maybe Barnes is watching. Steve’s only pretending to—so much hope and excitement fizzes inside him at the remembered sensation of warm lips against his, and the feel of Barnes’s arms around him, that he can barely concentrate. Not that he really has to. He’s seen it enough times that he can recite most of the dialogue by heart. He’d watched it every year with his parents, but had stopped after his mother had died because the ache of their missing presence had been too hard to bear. He can’t help but hope that this will be the start of a new tradition.

He shifts closer to Barnes, enjoying the heat Barnes’s body throws off. When Barnes doesn’t seem to notice, Steve shifts a little nearer. At this, Barnes gives him a knowing look.

Of _course_ Barnes had known exactly what he was up to.

Since he’s been caught anyway… he lifts Barnes’s arm up—his right arm, since Barnes always makes sure to sit on Steve’s left—and slides under it to press himself against Barnes’s side.

Barnes observes all this with something between amusement and concern. Steve bites his lip and waits. Barnes sighs, but he tucks Steve closer against him, so Steve counts it as a win.

“This isn’t a good idea,” Barnes says softly.

“Why not?”

“Because one morning you’re going to wake up and I’ll be gone. I can’t stay here forever, I’ve already stayed too long as it is. I’m putting you in danger, Steve.”

“But Hydra’s almost wiped out. With all the information you’ve been providing, and the Avengers hunting them, there’s almost nothing left.”

“Hydra or the authorities, same difference. They’re going to find me sooner or later.”

“Whatever time we have, I’m willing to take it.” There are more things he wants to say, but he knows Barnes isn’t ready to hear them yet. Some part of his soul has always been waiting for Barnes, and now that Steve has him back, he’s hanging on to him. _Don_ _’t fail him again._

“If you have to leave, I’ll understand.” He plans to follow Barnes into hiding, too, and had started getting his affairs in order. “If you don’t want this, then I won’t push. But if you’re saying no because you’re trying to protect me, don’t.”

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

Barnes doesn’t say no, even though he knows he should. He’s relieved when Steve doesn’t say anything, just threads their fingers together and leans into him.

He’s going to regret this, Barnes thinks. It’s only going to make it harder for him to leave when the time comes, harder for Steve to adjust. But he’s tired of pretending he doesn’t watch Steve too closely, doesn’t crave his nearness.

He _wants_.

It’s not a new thing, this want; it’s familiar, just as the urge to hide it, to protect Steve from it, is familiar.

When the movie is over, it’s hard not to think the world would have been a much better place if he’d never been born. But then he remembers pulling guys off Steve in back alleys, and watching his six through the crosshairs of his scope, and maybe… maybe he’d done one good thing in his life. He just should have died in that ravine like he was meant to— 

“Barnes?”

He blinks and looks at Steve.

“Are you okay?” Steve watches him, brow creased with worry. “You seem kind of… tense.”

A smile lifts one corner of his mouth as he nods. The warmth and weight of Steve’s slight body helps anchor him to the present, and he leaves off the thoughts of ‘what if’ for now.

“I’m okay,” he says. Steve settles back and curls an arm over his torso.

He still has another half an hour before he has to leave for his shift at the warehouse, so they sit and watch the end credits roll past, neither ready to let go of the other just yet. Steve strokes his side, comforting and intimate. He can feel something inside himself unknotting, continuing the process that had begun the night he’d stolen into Steve’s bedroom.

Wanting to feel more of Steve against him, he wraps his right arm around Steve and shifts to lie lengthwise on the couch. Steve makes a pleased sound as he stretches out and wedges himself between Barnes and the couch back.

“How are you so warm?” Steve murmurs, as he rests his head on Barnes’s shoulder, and throws an arm and a leg over him.

“Serum,” he says, biting back a smile at how contented Steve sounds. Steve is never warm enough, and he’s glad he can finally do something about it.

“Huh.” Steve resumes stroking Barnes’s side, the slow, gentle movement making his defenses drop one by one. “Do you want to stay the night?” Steve’s voice is tentative.

He holds Steve a little tighter to take the sting out of the rejection. “I have to work tonight. Rodriguez called in sick.”

It’s a good reason, but not the true one. Still too many nightmares, even with Noski. And in some of them, he hurts Steve even though he doesn’t want to, trapped in his own mind, impotent while his body does what it’s been trained to do.

He swallows past the constriction in his throat, and shifts the metal arm a little further away from Steve. “Come for breakfast tomorrow,” he offers instead. “Noski misses you.”

Steve smiles up at him. “It’s a date.”

When it’s time for him to go, they walk together to the door. Steve goes up on tip-toe and waits expectantly until Barnes gets the hint and leans down enough for Steve to kiss him.

He’s halfway to the warehouse before the warmth generated by their kiss dissipates enough for him to feel the cold of the December night air.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

“Are you sure about this?” Barnes asks. “I could hurt you. Badly.”

He knows down to the finest degree what his body is capable of, how it could hurt and maim and kill. But relearning pleasure, listening to his body for more than a damage report—it had taken him a while to remember what the slow, sweet throbbing in his groin meant.

“For the hundredth time, Barnes, _yes_. It’s been over a month and you’ve never once hurt me.” Steve takes Barnes’s metal hand in his. “I trust you.”

But that had been a month of kissing and making out with their clothes on, nothing that would test his control enough that he might accidentally hurt Steve. This though, Steve going down on him… heat pools in his gut at the thought.

“We don’t have to do this today,” Steve says. “Or this week, or even this month. I want to do this with you, but only if you want it too.”

He checks that the inhaler is on the nightstand before he sits down on the chair placed next to Steve’s bed. He puts his arms behind the chair back and closes his metal hand around his right wrist. With a mental command, he locks the metal hand into position.

“I want it.”

“Oh thank god.” Steve’s shoulders slump as he straddles Barnes. “I can’t keep taking cold showers. They’re bad for my fragile constitution, especially at this time of the year.”

Barnes chokes out a sound that’s part laugh and part groan as Steve’s weight settles on his bare thighs, their faces almost level. Steve’s as naked as he is, his pale, sleekly-muscled body gleaming like sun-warmed marble in the low light of the bedside lamp. Barnes’s fingers itch to trace every line of Steve’s body, to learn the texture of Steve’s skin.

Steve touches the star on the metal arm. “You don’t have to do this, Barnes.”

He sobers and shakes his head, instinctively checking that he can’t free his right wrist from the grip of the metal hand. “This or nothing, Steve.”

Steve’s eyes are sad and solemn as he nods his agreement. In an oddly formal tone, he asks, “Can I use my hands on you?”

Anticipation and nervousness swirl in a confusing mix inside him. “Yes.”

Steve’s eyes glow an intense blue as he cups Barnes’s face with his rough, slightly too-large hands. It should be terrifying, being the sole focus of Steve’s attention, all of Steve’s fire and ferocity narrowed down onto him. But he’s not terrified… he craves it.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Steve says, as he slowly slides his hands down Barnes’s neck and over his body. Steve’s touch is gentle and careful as he slides his fingers over the scars on Barnes’s shoulder.

The reverent sound of Steve’s voice goes a long way towards loosening the tight little knot of fear he hadn’t fully acknowledged till now. He’s both relieved and anxious at the way Steve doesn’t differentiate between his left and right shoulder, except to be extra gentle with his scars. The slow steady pace of Steve’s hands over his skin would be hypnotic if he wasn’t so electrically aware of the heat spreading under his skin wherever Steve’s hands pass.

Steve leans in to whisper in his ear. “Can I use my mouth on you?”

“Yes.” His heart pounds as he waits, nervousness almost overtaken by anticipation.

Steve strokes Barnes’s hair back from his face, the drag of Steve’s hands serving to tip his face up to receive Steve’s kiss. It’s soft and teasing, as Steve brushes his lips over and over against Barnes’s, until Barnes groans in frustration and tries to deepen the kiss. Steve leans back with a sly, teasing smile as he looks at Barnes from under long lashes.

“Steve,” he growls.

Steve’s smile deepens as he presses a kiss to the corner of Barnes’s lips before trailing his way up to Barnes’s ear. “Can I use my tongue on you?” he whispers, close enough that his lips brush against Barnes’s ear.

“Yes,” he whispers back on a shaky breath. And then has to swallow a curse when Steve starts leaving wet, sucking kisses on his neck as Steve makes his way back to Barnes’s mouth. Steve kisses him slow and wet and deep. The slide of skin on skin as Steve’s hips rock against his, brushing their erections together, floods his nerve endings with new sensations.

He wants so much to be able to touch Steve, but the pain as his right wrist strains against the unyielding metal of his left hand reminds him why he can’t.

Steve nibbles his way back to Barnes’s ear. “One day,” he whispers, “if you'll let me, I want to ride you just like this.”

Barnes gasps, and his hips rock up of their own accord. Steve arches and grinds down on Barnes’s cock, head tipped back as a moan escapes him. The servos in the arm whine as Barnes’s right arm tries to come up so he can pull Steve to him.

He rocks his hips up again, chasing the sensation, but Steve slides back out of reach.

“Stick to the plan, Barnes,” Steve says, in a graveled voice.

“Fuck the plan.”

Steve gives a surprised laugh. “Only if I’m the plan.”

Whatever Barnes might have said in response is lost when Steve leans forward and flicks his tongue over one furled nipple.

“Can I use my teeth on you?” Steve whispers against Barnes skin.

Barnes sucks in a breath. “Yes.”

Barnes sees a flash of white, feels the wet heat of Steve’s breath on his skin, then the short, sharp pinch of Steve’s teeth on his nipple. He jerks as sensation prickles straight down to his cock.

“Okay?” Steve asks.

He nods.

A sly smirk curls up one corner of Steve’s lips. Which is when Barnes realizes that Steve fully intends to wreck him.

And that’s exactly what he proceeds to do as he nips at Barnes’s skin, and soothes the sting with his tongue, while clever fingers trace patterns on his skin. Steve doesn’t differentiate between Barnes’s scarred shoulder and the rest of him, and for that, he’s grateful.

When Steve slithers off his lap and drops to his knees, Barnes’s heart rate kicks up another notch. Steve looks up with dark, hungry eyes, as he slides his hands up Barnes’s naked thighs, a mischievous smile curving his lips.

Barnes figures out pretty quickly the reason for that smile when Steve spends the next few minutes touching, licking, and sucking every square inch of skin around his groin area except where he wants Steve’s mouth most.

“Steve,” he whispers, the plea obvious in his shaky voice.

Steve looks up at him, plump lower lip caught between his teeth, pupils so dilated his eyes look almost black. If Barnes’s heart rate climbs any higher, he might go into cardiac arrest.

“I'm gonna take your cock in my mouth now,” Steve says, low and dark.

A long groan escapes Barnes at those words, and he can only nod in confirmation. It takes all his self-control to keep still when Steve’s mouth sinks down on his cock in a slow, hot slide. He’s not sure how he keeps himself in the chair after that, because the things Steve’s doing to him... It’s hot, wet suction, and teasing licks, the brush of kiss-swollen lips over the tip of his cock. Hands dragging over his skin, cupping his balls. So much pleasure after so long without. It’s almost overwhelming.

“Steve,” he gasps. “Stop.”

Steve pulls off him immediately. “What’s wrong?” he asks in a husky voice.

“I’m—I can’t last much longer.”

“Oh.” Steve licks his lips and smiles, a gleam in his eyes that makes Barnes distinctly nervous. “You can come in my mouth.”

Barnes groans and squeezes his eyes shut, but not before he sees the satisfied look on Steve’s face. Little shit. Steve swallows him back down and it’s not very long at all before he tenses up and bites down so hard on his lip that he can taste blood as his climax rushes over him, intense and all-consuming. 

When he comes back to himself, Steve’s still kneeling at his feet, cock hard and flushed a deep, beautiful pink. Steve’s resting his head on Barnes’s thigh, and watching him with a pleased smile on his face as he runs his hands up and down Barnes’s calves. The phrase ‘cat that got the cream’ came to mind.

Barnes instructs his metal hand to release, and takes a moment to loosen his shoulders. “My turn now.”

Steve straightens up. “You don’t have to.”

“Please.” He cups the fingers of his right hand over Steve’s cheek and leans down to kiss him, putting all the desire he feels for Steve in it. “Let me,” he whispers against Steve’s lips. Steve shudders, and looks at him with dazed eyes.

He wants to give Steve the same pleasure, but he doesn't want to put his hands on Steve. So there's only one alternative, really. “Go sit on the bed.”

After one shaky inhale, Steve gets up on knees that don’t look too steady, and goes to sit on the edge of the mattress. Barnes kneels in between Steve’s legs, locks his hands behind his back again, and looks up at Steve.

“Jesus…” Steve breathes, eyes huge and dark.

Now it’s Barnes’s turn to smirk. He leans forward and slowly licks his way up Steve's cock. “Tell me what you like?”

Steve's leaning back on his hands, breathing fast, and looking at Barnes with wide eyes. “Um… I think we can safely say I'll pretty much like anything you do.”

“I'm serious, Steve. I… don't really know what I'm doing.”

“Okay… okay. How about this, you do whatever you're comfortable with, and assume I'm enthusiastically on board with everything unless I tell you to stop.”

Clear parameters. Good. He can work with that. “Okay.” He leans forward again and carefully slides his mouth down over Steve’s cock. It’s not the most comfortable sensation in the world, having a cock in his mouth, but oh, the sounds coming from Steve make it all worth the ache in his jaw and the intrusion into his mouth.

It’s hard to remember what Steve did to him, since he was mostly lost in the sensation of the liquid heat of Steve’s mouth on his cock. But there was more than suction involved. He could remember the velvety wetness of Steve’s tongue on him, so he tries to replicate that. It’s met with some success when Steve swears, and his hips jerk up, forcing his cock further into Barnes’s mouth than he was ready for. He jerks back with a cough.

“Sorry, sorry…” Steve’s hands hover near his face, like he’s not sure if he should touch or not. “Please, you’ve got to hold me down. I can’t—”

“Steve…”

“It’s okay, Barnes, we don’t have to.” Steve kisses him gently. “I can jerk off on my own. You could—” Steve gives him a hesitant smile. “Can you hold me?”

Steve trusts him to do this. Maybe it’s time he started trusting himself too. When Steve starts to get up, Barnes says, “Wait.”

Steve freezes, licks his lips, and then sits back down.

Barnes releases his right wrist, brings his right arm up and lays it across Steve’s lap. He frowns. That’s not going to work. Neither is holding Steve down by one hip.

“You can touch me with it, you know,” Steve says, “your other arm. I get why you didn’t want to earlier, but now it’s different. If anyone’s losing control, it’s gonna be me. And I know you can be gentle with your metal arm, I’ve seen you with Noski. Just, y’know, watch out for my pubes,” he adds dryly. “I know how much fur Noski’s lost to the joins.”

Steve has a point. Maybe he could try it first, and if he felt himself losing control, he’d stop. He takes a fortifying breath. Then, grateful for the leather half-glove that will help buffer the hard metal of his hand, he grasps Steve’s hips and presses down firmly. He really doesn’t want any stray thoughts escaping the minefield that is his memory. Steve sucks in a breath, and his hips jerk in Barnes’s grip.

“Is this okay?” Barnes asks, unsure how to proceed.

“ _God,_ yes,” Steve says, in a cracked whisper.

Barnes files Steve’s reaction away for further study.

With his hands otherwise occupied, Barnes uses his lips and tongue on Steve’s cock, like he’s eating a slowly melting ice cream cone, long licks from base to tip, then circling around the head like he’s catching drips. He smiles at the sharp curse this earns him, and the abortive movements of bony hips under his hands. Steve’s hands grip the covers on the bed, hanging on desperately like he’s afraid he’ll forget himself and grip Barnes by the hair, or back of the neck.

Barnes loves the way Steve comes undone under his hands and mouth. And the _sounds_ … the moans and sighs and choked off breaths, the swear words, the way he chants Barnes’s name like a prayer. Steve gives himself over fully, doesn’t hold anything back. That trust is something Barnes will treasure and protect with everything in him.

“Barnes,” Steve groans, “Barnes, I’m gonna—I’m gonna come...”

He pulls off quickly and uses his right hand to finish Steve off.

Steve throws back his head and groans, long and low and loud, like it’s pulled up from deep inside him. Barnes jerks him through it as he takes in the sight of Steve’s face while he’s lost in pleasure, and carefully stores that memory, too. He only stops when Steve collapses back on the bed with another groan and tugs feebly at his metal hand.

“Come here,” Steve whispers.

He climbs up onto the bed and pulls a boneless Steve into a more comfortable position. He pats around on the bed until he finds Steve’s discarded t-shirt, and uses it to clean them both up.

“I love you.” Steve watches Barnes with eyes that are steady and serious. “I thought you should know.”

He blinks, hand frozen in the act of wiping Steve’s stomach. “You’re only telling me this now?”

He gets poked in the side by a long, knobbly finger.

“I didn’t want you to think I was saying it just to get you in bed, you ass.”

He laughs and squeezes Steve hard enough that he squeaks. He doesn’t know what this feeling in his chest is; a soft warmth like a fuzzy blanket on a winter’s day, the feeling of comfort and home; but he’s pretty sure it’s love.

He ignores the timer ticking down in his head to the day he has to leave. One day, and soon, his instincts tell him, someone will come for him.

Steve bites his lip and looks up at Barnes. “Will you stay?” There’s hope in Steve’s eyes, but also resignation. It’s not the first time he’s asked, and Barnes has said no every single time.

Even though the dreams don’t come as often anymore, he should still say no. But he can already feel himself weakening.

“Okay,” he says. Steve’s already drawing breath to say something when he taps Steve on the nose to get his attention. “If I’m dreaming, don’t try to wake me. Don’t do anything that might get my attention. I won’t be—I might hurt you. Okay?”

Steve’s eyes are sad when he nods. “Okay.”

Later that night, he dreams. He dreams of his spiderlings; correcting their fighting form, drying their tears, and setting their broken bones—broken bones that he’d sometimes been responsible for. When he wakes, his cheeks are crusty with the dried tracks of tears.

He remembers that even as the Soldier, he knew how to be gentle.

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

Steve updates the last follow-up note on Jenna’s case file and hits save. Outside, rain is falling. Inside, the only thing he can hear over the sound of raindrops pattering against the bedroom window is Noski’s rough purr, and the scritch of pen on paper.

He usually hates February in DC; there’s the hope of spring, a little bit of sun showing through the clouds to warm the skin of his face—then rain, snow, cold. Having his own six-foot plus personal space heater to cuddle with has changed his outlook significantly, though.

Once the upload to the office server is completed, he closes his laptop and puts it on the nightstand. His fingers pick at the folds of his blanket while he sneaks a peek at Barnes. It’s not every night that Barnes stays over. Some days he needs space, some days he doesn’t trust himself to fall asleep next to Steve.

But today had been one of the good days, so Barnes is sitting in Steve’s bed, looking soft and rumpled in a gray t-shirt. It’s short-sleeved, which Steve thinks is a good development, a sign that Barnes is feeling more comfortable leaving his metal arm uncovered. He’s got his back propped against pillows while he makes notes on a writing pad, referring every now and then to the screen of his own laptop.

Steve opens his mouth, then closes it again.

He shouldn't compare. Barnes has never once made Steve feel like he was less. If anything, in his own quiet way, he makes Steve feel wanted and loved and about a thousand feet tall.

But still, it's hard not to compare. Captain America, for fuck’s sake. Sure he’d started out as a sickly, smart-mouthed little fucker, but after the serum, he’d been a smart-mouthed fucker with a body like Adonis.

He won’t ask. He won’t. Wo—

“Did you and Captain America ever—Were you together?”

God-fucking-dammit. _Impulse control, Rogers, do it better._

After a surprised silence, Barnes’s eyes narrow on Steve, while Steve tries not to slide under the blanket.

Barnes closes his laptop, puts his writing pad and pen on top of the closed lid, and sets it aside. Then, he lifts Noski up from where she’s lying between them, moves her to his left side, and slides closer till he’s pressed up against Steve. Noski gives an offended chirp, curls up, and buries her nose under her tail.

“No,” Barnes says, eyes calm and steady on Steve.

Steve can’t help the rush of relief at that answer.

“Sometimes, I thought maybe—” Barnes shakes his head. “But we never talked about it. It’d never have worked… There was so much he wanted to achieve. And there was Peggy.” Barnes’s lashes sweep down to hide his eyes. “They would’ve been happy together.”

Peggy Carter. Steve remembers her from his dreams. A woman with snapping brown eyes and red red lips and the spirit of a warrior goddess. There’d been a sense of a meeting of minds, and the possibility of _more._

He shifts around to face Barnes. “I’m pretty sure you weren’t the only one,” he says. “Because I’ve been dreaming his memories all my life, and most of them are about you. He may have come to love Peggy given time, but you… you were everything to him.”

Steve cups Barnes’s face between his hands. “But that’s all in the past.” Barnes watches him with eyes that are wide and unguarded. “You’re mine now,” Steve says, “and I’m yours. So when you go, I’m coming with you.”

“You shouldn’t—” Barnes whispers.

Steve shakes his head. “You don’t understand. I keep losing you! In my dreams, you leave me behind, then you fall, and—” He takes five deep breaths to calm his racing heart. “It’s my choice, Barnes.”

“Think of your kids, Steve.”

Steve winces. Barnes wasn’t pulling his punches. “It—It’ll be hard to leave them, but I work with a lot of really great people. They’ll be taken care of. I’m sure of it. I’m a social worker, Barnes, I may be good at what I do, but I’m no Captain America. I’m not indispensable.” All his case notes are in order, follow-ups and to-do lists are all up to date. He’s done everything he can think of so any of his colleagues can step in at a moment’s notice. 

Barnes still doesn’t look convinced.

“Are you fucking kidding me? You’ll take your cat, but not me?” Barnes opens his mouth, but Steve cuts him off. “No, don’t even try it. You think I haven’t noticed Noski has her own little go bag by the door, ready and packed, next to the cat carrier?”

“I'm not taking Noski with me, Steve. I was going to—” Barnes’s gaze slides away.

He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Barnes look quite that shifty before. “You were going to… what?” he asks suspiciously.

“I was going to… leave her with you.” Barnes holds up a hand when Steve opens his mouth to say something about that. “It’s not forever, Steve. I’ll contact you. I’ve already set up untraceable email accounts for both of us. And you’ll have my cat. At the very least, I’ll come back for her.”

“Oh _fuck you_.”

“Steve,” Barnes says. “It’s not safe.”

“I don’t care about safe.” He jabs a finger at Barnes. “Swear to me, Barnes. If you have time to get me, you’ll come and get me. If not, you contact me as soon as you can so I can go to you.”

A long sigh escapes Barnes. “You really are him. ‘Cause trying to talk sense into him was worse than herding goats.”

“Hey!”

Barnes frowns at him. “How do you expect me to go on the run with a boyfriend and a cat in tow?”

Steve blinks. “Boyfriend?”

Barnes clamps his mouth shut.

“Boyfriend?” Steve repeats, as he slings one knee over Barnes’s lap, straddles him, and loops his arms around Barnes’s neck.

“Stop it,” Barnes says, even his hands come to rest on Steve’s hips. “This is serious.”

“There’s no way you’re leaving me behind now,” Steve says, making no attempt to hide the smirk on his face.

Barnes gives a long-suffering sigh, and stares up at the ceiling.

“We could always leave Noski with Sam,” Steve offers.

Barnes quirks an eyebrow at him. “I’m sure he’ll love that,” he says dryly.

 

**Chapter 5**

In the end, all their planning ends up wasted. Because a few weeks later, Steve walks out of his office building only to have the Black Widow fall into step next to him. 

With her mousy brown hair, baggy hoodie, and slouching walk, she’s barely recognizable as the woman who’d stalked through a crowd of photographers on Capitol Hill, with her head held high and defiant, her red hair a challenge to anyone who would overlook her.

His stomach falls to somewhere around his knees, but because he never reacts well to being afraid, he says, “Did you have people watching me just so you could time your entrance like that?” 

It’s hard not to sound impressed. She’s the Black Widow after all. He’s been Team Widow ever since she handed the members of the congressional hearing their collective asses after the whole Hydra mess.   

Her lips quirk up into an almost smile. “If I told you, I'd have to kill you.”

Up close and dressed in nondescript clothes, there’s nothing to distract from the cool intelligence in her eyes. That gaze makes it very clear that it would be a bad idea to lie to her—he feels weighed, dissected, analyzed, and categorized—but he’s going to try, anyway. He only needs to throw her off long enough for him to warn Barnes. They’d planned for this.

“You’re here about that guy right? The one people call”—he drops his voice, mindful of the people around them—“the Winter Soldier?”

Her smile turns a shade more knowing.

“Okay, I admit it, I helped him.” He walks past the turning to the parking lot and carries on along the crowded sidewalk. The little uptick in her smile lets him know that his decision to stay in a crowded area didn’t go unnoticed. “It’s not exactly like he gave me a lot of choice, he grabbed me when I was getting into my car one night and forced me to take him to my apartment. I did what he wanted and then he left.”

“What did he ask you to do?”

“Remove some things from his body.” He doesn’t try to suppress the shudder that runs through him at the memory.

“And when did this happen?”

He scrunches up his face in thought. “Round about the time the helicarriers were destroyed. So… April?”

“I’m curious,” she says, “why didn’t you report him as soon as he left your apartment? You must have recognized him, must have known that he’s a wanted killer.”

Shitshitshit. How much to say? “Yeah, well... he didn’t hurt me.” She doesn’t seem unsympathetic, so he adds, “And about the killing, I don’t think he had any choice in the matter.” From the look on her face, they could’ve been discussing the weather. “Look, if you find him, don’t—don’t hurt him. I think he’s been hurt enough.” 

She studies him for one long pulse-pounding moment. “Speaking of finding him, do you know where he is now?”

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. “I haven’t seen him since that night.”

The smile that slowly spreads on her face makes him distinctly nervous.

“Now _that_ is an outright lie.” She pulls out her phone and shows him surveillance photos of him and Barnes at the farmers’ market.

It’s only when someone bumps into him from behind that he realizes he’s stopped walking. For one wild moment, he thinks about running, but then sanity prevails and he steps onto the grass verge so he doesn’t block the sidewalk while he quietly has a heart attack.

“How did you know.”

“Facial recognition software and the most advanced AI in the world. He can change his hair and clothes, but he can’t change the shape of his face. Or his ears,” she adds in a dry tone. In the photo, only Barnes’s ear and a sliver of his jaw is visible, the rest of his face is hidden by his baseball cap. It’s a distinctive jawline, and Steve’s very partial to it.

She takes her phone back and starts swiping through the photos. “Of course, it helped that we found some good photos to use for comparison. We couldn’t get much usable footage from the attack on the Triskelion—too much hair flying everywhere.”

When she turns the phone back towards him, he sees a photo of—shit. James Buchanan Barnes. It looks like his service photo, and in it, Barnes looks so young and innocent that Steve can feel his heart breaking all over again.

“And then there’s you,” Romanoff says. “We lucked out when our AI flagged someone smashing in your car window one fine night. When we got a look at you, you got bumped right up to the top of our to-do list. Because the Winter Soldier would have a very compelling reason to remain near you.”

Romanoff seemed very casual about disclosing sensitive information to someone she suspected was helping a wanted killer. He folds his arms and looks her in the eye. “Why are you _really_ here.”

She smiles at him like she’s pleased he’s finally putting two and two together. “I have an offer for him, but I’m pretty sure he’ll be in the wind before I can get close enough to speak to him.”

“What kind of offer?”

“A job offer.”

He glares at her. “What kind of job, Ms Romanoff? Ki—” He breaks off at her warning glance, looks around at the oblivious pedestrians, and lowers his voice. “Killing for the government?” he whispers furiously. “How is that any better than how Hydra used him?”

Her gaze turns hard. “I’m sure you know I don’t work for the government. And that’s not how the Avengers work.” She studies him for a moment. “A man with his particular skill set could achieve a lot with the proper backup.” She shrugs. “It seems a waste to stay as just a night watchman.”

He bristles at the implication that they’ve known all about Barnes and what he’d been up to for a while now. “Isn’t that up to him?”

“Precisely.”

Damn it. She had him there.

“I can also tell him who he is.”

He resists the urge to snap back ‘He _knows_ who he is’. Because that was also up to Barnes. “Why would you help him?”

“In a very difficult place, he was… kind to me. As kind as he was allowed to be. I owe him a debt.” For a moment, there’s a flicker of real emotion in her eyes.

It’s deliberate, of course, she’s too trained for it to be anything else. But he can only go with his gut on this. “I’ll pass on the message,” he says.

“Thank you.”

 

๑      ๑      ๑

 

Barnes has been surveilling the Black Widow for a week now. It hadn’t been easy, not with her level of training and paranoia. He approves. It’d made the challenge more enjoyable. But it’s time to end the game—he misses Steve, and he owes Rodriguez and Talbot too many shifts already.

When she leaves the dance studio, he steps out where she can see him. She shows no reaction when she catches sight of him. She always was the best of his students. He keeps his hands in sight and his posture relaxed and lets her approach.

“Soldat.”

“Natalia.”

Her eyes widen just a fraction at the sound of his old name for her. “So you remember me?” she asks.

“I do.” He glances at her shoulder. “Not then. I’m sorry I shot you.”

“Twice,” she says archly. “But I survived both times. You never took the kill shots.”

“The first time,” he says, in answer to the unasked question, “it wasn’t necessary. You weren’t my target, you were just in my way. But the second…” The words are bitter in his mouth. “I would have. You know I would have.”

“It’s how we were trained,” she says with a shrug. “So what should I call you?”

“Call me Barnes,” he says.

Her gaze sharpens. “Do you know, then?”

“Who I am? Or was?” He nods. “Yes, I do.” Which is all he intends to say on the subject. “I was told you wanted to speak to me?”

“First,” she says with a smile that’s almost winsome, “you can buy me a cup of coffee.”

“In a nice public place, of course.”

“Of course.”

They walk together to a nearby cafe and while Natalia goes to order, he secures them a table on the sidewalk with good sight lines by dint of glaring at the table’s occupants until they gulp down their coffees and leave.

When Natalia reappears with their coffees, they sit down and drink in silence while she assesses him over the rim of her cup. He tries to look suitably sane and non-psychopathic.

He must pass, because she says, “Fury is impressed by how much you’ve achieved on your own. He thinks with support, you could probably cripple Hydra. Enough that it’d take them years to recover.”

“Fury?”

“Surprised?” There’s a rueful twist to her lips. “So was I... I saw him die, after all.”

One less death on his conscience. “Conditions?” he asks.

“You carry on the way you have been—no casualties unless necessary.”

He keeps his face blank. He’d been expecting a long list of conditions; sureties of behavior, even some monitoring.

“Fury wants to pool our resources,” she continues. “Share intel. No one knows Hydra like you do. We can provide back up and a custom paint job for the arm, since it kind of stands out.” She raises an eyebrow. “What about you? Any conditions?”

“You protect Steve.” There’ll be a long fight about that later, but Steve’s safety is the one thing he refuses to compromise on.

“We can do that.”

“I won’t move to New York.”

“We expected that, but we hope you’ll reconsider.”

He shrugs. “I go where Steve goes.” To be able to say that, and not have to worry about Steve being beaten to death in a dark alley… everything he went through was not for nothing.

“Stark might have a job for him, actually.”

“Stark.”

“Don’t make that face, Barnes, Stark Industries does a lot of charity work. I think that might be right up Rogers’s street.”

“I leave that up to him.” Although the thought of Steve being protected with Stark tech while he’s not around did have its appeal. He’s not above a little persuasion.

They hash out details for the next half and hour or so, establish lines of communications, and supply logistics. He’s looking forward to getting his hands on some Stark-designed weapons.

After they leave the cafe, he loses himself in the crowd. He pulls out his phone to text Steve as he walks back to his motel. _It_ _’s done. I’m coming home._

Steve’s reply comes through within seconds. _I_ _’ll be waiting._

**Epilogue**

 

It’s late by the time he gets in. Even though he’d caught the first flight out after the Indonesian government had ended search and rescue efforts for the earthquake, it’d taken him more than a day to get from Aceh to New York.

He’s drained from being trapped in enclosed spaces with too many people. All he wants is to see Steve and Noski. And then, he wants to soak in the tub for about an hour. He probably has dust and grime embedded in his skin after spending three days digging through rubble and debris left behind by the earthquake.

Taking down Hydra was important work, but pulling his first survivor out of the rubble was when he’d finally felt like he could reclaim his name. That had been two months ago, after a gas explosion had leveled a building in Portland. The woman, Madeline, had been so happy to see him after he’d broken through the collapsed wall of the apartment that she hadn’t even cared about his arm, or his reputation.

He drops his duffel and stoops to pick up Noski, who’d come to investigate as soon as he’d gotten the door open. He finds Steve curled up asleep on the couch, covered in the fuzzy red blanket they’d brought with them. There’s a file dropped haphazardly on the floor next to him. By the depression in the blanket, Noski had been keeping Steve company right up until he’d opened the door.

He sets Noski down and gathers up the scattered papers. A quick scan before he puts them back in the file tells him that they’re the shelter proposal for street kids that Steve’s working on. He puts the file on the coffee table and looks around the living room, hoping…

The lights from the Christmas tree are enough for him to spot the mistletoe hanging from the ceiling light. Something inside him lightens. Steve hadn’t forgotten.

He crouches down next to Steve and softly calls his name.

Steve blinks sleepily at him for a moment. “Bucky!” He struggles to free himself from the blankets. “Damn it! I wanted to be awake when you got home…”

Bucky’s already braced for the impact when Steve launches himself at Bucky.

“I missed you,” Steve whispers into his hair.

“You had Noski to keep you company.”

Steve sniffs. “She’s not as good at keeping my feet warm.” Steve runs his hands over Bucky’s body. He’s used to it by now, so he holds still for the inspection.

“You’re okay?” Steve asks.

“I can take a lot of knocks.”

Steve gives him a speaking look. “You know that’s not what I mean, Buck.”

He nods. “I’m okay. We found a lot more survivors, so…”

“That’s good,” Steve says. Then, with a slight edge to his voice, he says, “Are the other teams still being asses?”

Proving himself to the other search and rescue teams had been hard. It’d taken several operations in different parts of the world before they could get past his history and begin seeing him as someone who was just there to do the work. Thanks to his enhanced strength and hearing, he soon became known as the guy who could go in before an area was stabilized. That had helped significantly.

“No,” he said. “It was fine.”

Steve cups Bucky’s face with his hands and looks at him with solemn eyes. “You’re a good man, Bucky Barnes, and I’ll fight anyone who says different.”

It’s hard holding Steve’s unflinching gaze, and yet he can’t look away. He’d followed Steve to the ends of the earth once, and he’ll continue following him to the end of this life, and probably all the ones that come after as well. Because Steve had died and had still come back to him. What else is he supposed to draw from that but that their souls will find their way back to each other, no matter what.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find us on tumblr :) [yetanotherobsessivereader](http://yetanotherobsessivereader.tumblr.com/) and [this-simple-mind](http://this-simple-mind.tumblr.com/)


End file.
